Influence of aerosols on atmospheric transmission at the Baltic Sea: Comparison of experimental results with model simulations using MODTRAN

A recent field trial in the Northern German littoral area of the Baltic Sea yielded a dataset of visibility, meteorological parameters, aerosol size distributions, as well as transmission over a horizontal path of 1344 m. The experimental results are compared to simulations using the MODTRAN (moderate resolution atmospheric transmission) model, that was run with the rural and Navy Aerosol Model, (NAM) in various configurations. Best results were obtained when MODTRAN was tuned with the measured visibility values. When NAM was used without visibility tuning, MODTRAN tended to overestimate the transmission in low-visibility conditions, which was attributed to the presence of a non-maritime aerosol fraction.