Morphological effects on the radiative properties of soot aerosols in different internally mixing states with sulfate

The radiative properties of soot aerosols largely depend on their mixing state and morphology factors. In this paper, we generated soot aggregates in four mixing states with sulfate, including bare soot, partly coated soot, heavily coated soot and soot with inclusion. The number of monomers and fractal dimension of soot were varied in each mixing state while the radius of monomers was fixed at 0.025 μm. Using the discrete dipole approximation method (DDA), we calculated optical parameters relevant for climate forcing simulation at mid-visible wavelength (0.55 μm). Internal mixing results in enhanced absorption, scattering cross sections as well as the single scattering albedo. The enhancement ratio of the absorption is largest for heavily coated soot, which ranges from 1.5 to 1.65 with a soot volume fraction of 0.15 and is larger for soot with larger fractal dimension. The scattering cross section can be dramatically increased by factors larger than 10 when soot is heavily coated. The increasing of both the scattering cross section and the single scattering albedo is larger for soot aggregates with smaller number of monomers and fractal dimension. The asymmetry parameter is insensitive to the fractal dimension for heavily coated soot and soot with inclusion. Two simplified models including the homogeneous sphere model (HS) and the core shell sphere model (CS) were examined using the DDA results as references. The performance of the HS and CS model largely depends on the morphology factors and the mixing state of soot. For bare and partly coated soot, both the HS and CS model can introduce relative errors as large as several tens percent. For heavily coated soot, the HS model predicts the absorption with relative errors within 10%, while it overestimates the absorption with relative errors no larger than 20% for soot with inclusion. The HS model predicts the single scattering albedo and the asymmetry parameter with relative errors no larger than 10% for heavily coated soot and soot with inclusion, which is much better than the prediction by the CS model. - Highlights: • Soot aggregates in different mixing states with sulfate were generated. • Morphological factors of soot aggregates in each mixing state were considered. • Radiative properties of aggregates were calculated by discrete dipole approximation. • The homogeneous sphere and the core shell sphere models were examined