Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Discussions www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net 1867-8610 3 2 2010 10.5194/amtd-3-1303-2010 http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/3/1303/2010/ http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/3/1303/2010/amtd-3-1303-2010.html http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/3/1303/2010/amtd-3-1303-2010.pdf 1303 1321 2010-03-29 Investigation of the accuracy for single scattering albedo retrieval from global UV irradiance measurements S. Kazadzis kazadzis@meteo.noa.gr J. Gröbner A. Arola V. Amiridis Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development, National Observatory of Athens, Greece Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos, World Radiation Center, Davos, Switzerland Finnish Meteorological Institute, Kuopio Unit, Finland Institute for Space Applications and Remote Sensing, National Observatory of Athens, Greece Retrieval of aerosol optical absorption properties in the UV spectral range such as single scattering albedo (SSA), using remote sensing techniques, is currently an open scientific issue. We investigate the limitations on calculating columnar SSA using a combination of global UV spectral measurements (that are comon in various UV monitoring stations worldwide) in combination with radiative transfer modeling. To point out the difficulties in such retrieval we have used the travelling reference spectroradiometer (QASUME) results from 27 visits to UV monitoring stations around Europe, using the QASUME instrument as relative reference, analyzing absolute differences and also temporal and spectral deviations of UV irraidances, that are used as basic input for the SSA retrieval.<br> <br> The results comparing the mean SSA derived by all instruments, measuring synchronous UV spectra, showed that 5 were within &plusmn;0.02 difference from the SSA calculated from the QASUME instrument, while 17 were within &plusmn;0.04, for the Solar zenith angle of 60 degrees. As for the uncertainty that has been calculated using the 2&sigma; standard deviation of the spectral measurements, a mean 0.072 and 0.10 (2&sigma;) uncertainties have been calculated for 60&deg; and 30&deg; respectively. Based on such results we show that only very few instruments could be able to detect long term SSA changes. 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