A method for estimating optical properties of dusty cloud

Based on the scattering properties of nonspherical dust aerosol,a new method is developed for retrieving dust aerosol optical depths of dusty clouds.The dusty clouds are defined as the hybrid system of dust plume and cloud.The new method is based on transmittance measurements from surface-based instruments multi-filter rotating shadowband radiometer(MFRSR)and cloud parameters from lidar measurements.It uses the difference of absorption between dust aerosols and water droplets for distinguishing and estimating the optical properties of dusts and clouds,respectively.This new retrieval method is not sensitive to the retrieval error of cloud properties and the maximum absolute deviations of dust aerosol and total optical depths for thin dusty cloud retrieval algorithm are only 0.056 and 0.1.respectively,for given possible uncertainties.The retrieval error for thick dusty cloud mainly depends on lidar-based total dusty cloud properties.