Aerosol Characterization by AERONET Sunphotometry

AERONET sunphotometer measurements performed at the Physics Department of Lecce’s University (Italy) (40° 20’ N, 18° 06’ E) are used to characterize aerosol properties by aerosol optical depths (AOD), single scattering albedos (SSA), Angstrom coefficients (Å), and fine (Nf) and coarse (Nc) number of particles per cross section of the atmospheric column. AOD, SSA, Å, and Nf/Nc temporal plots reveal that aerosol load, particle size distribution and chemical composition depend on seasons and lead to assume that higher aerosol loads with a predominant contribution of small, absorbing particles dominate over south-east Italy in springsummer