Influence of sun photometer filter function on retrieving aerosol optical depth

The aerosol optical depth (AOD) measured by sun photometer is obtained after subtracting the Rayleigh optical depth, ozone optical depth and other absorption gas optical depth from total optical depth. Wherein, it was according to Beer´s attenuation law. However, the band filter function of sun photometers should be considered when retrieving AODs. In this paper, it was systemically analyzed the influence of sun photometer filter function on retrieving aerosol optical depth. Numerous study showed that the band filter function has a significant impact on retrieving AODs: 1)The uncertainty of AODs may become large when the filter function is not well desgined; 2) Under large zenith observation condition, it may introduce non-neglected errors if Rayleigh scattering optical depth is calculated directly at central wavelength without filter function considered; 3) The band weighted absorption coefficients of O₃ and NO₂ almost hold constant when gas amounts increase, except for questionable designed band filter; 4) These weak absorption optical depths can not be ignored such as H₂O absorption optical depths in 1020nm &1640nm band and CH₄, CO₂ absorption optical depths in 1640nm band.