Atmospheric total ozone content from spectral extinction measurements

Abstract

The estimation of columnar content of atmospheric ozone from multispectral solar extinction measurements in the visible and near infra-red range is described and has been applied to the ground-had multiwavelength solar radiometer (MWR) data for the period December 1993-May 1995 at the coastal station, Trivandrum (8.55 N, 77 E.). The estimated values of total ozone content compare well, on an average, with the climatological monthly means obtained from other measurements, except during the monsoon months. The disagreement during monsoon months appears to be the manifestations of of local meteorological processes which cause significant changes in the aerosol size distribution and hence the spectral variation of aerosol optical depth.