Atmospheric Aerosol Limb Scanning Based on the Lunar Eclipses Photometry

Abstract

The work is devoted to the analysis of the surface photometric observations of two total lunar eclipses in 2004. The lunar surface relative brightness distribution inside the umbra was used to retrieve the vertical distribution of aerosol extinction of the solar radiation expanding by a tangent path and its dependence on the location at the limb of the Earth. The upper altitude of troposphere aerosol layer was estimated for different latitude zones. The correlation between additional aerosol extinction in the upper troposphere and cyclones was investigated.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfe