Articles | Volume 9, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-9-1721-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-9-1721-2016
Research article
 | 
20 Apr 2016
Research article |  | 20 Apr 2016

LOAC: a small aerosol optical counter/sizer for ground-based and balloon measurements of the size distribution and nature of atmospheric particles – Part 1: Principle of measurements and instrument evaluation

Jean-Baptiste Renard, François Dulac, Gwenaël Berthet, Thibaut Lurton, Damien Vignelles, Fabrice Jégou, Thierry Tonnelier, Matthieu Jeannot, Benoit Couté, Rony Akiki, Nicolas Verdier, Marc Mallet, François Gensdarmes, Patrick Charpentier, Samuel Mesmin, Vincent Duverger, Jean-Charles Dupont, Thierry Elias, Vincent Crenn, Jean Sciare, Paul Zieger, Matthew Salter, Tjarda Roberts, Jérôme Giacomoni, Matthieu Gobbi, Eric Hamonou, Haraldur Olafsson, Pavla Dagsson-Waldhauserova, Claude Camy-Peyret, Christophe Mazel, Thierry Décamps, Martin Piringer, Jérémy Surcin, and Daniel Daugeron

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Short summary
LOAC is a light aerosols counter for performing measurements at the surface and under all kinds of atmospheric balloons. LOAC performs observations at two scattering angles. The first one at 12° is insensitive to the refractive index of the particles; the second one at 60° is strongly sensitive to the refractive index. By combining the measurements, it is possible to retrieve the size distribution between 0.2 and 100 micrometeres and to estimate the nature of the dominant particles.
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