Study of Aerosol Vertical Profiles during Cloudy Days

Aerosol measurements have been carried out at Kolhapur (16°42′N, 74°14′E) by using Twilight Photometer, which is indigenously designed and developed at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, a tropical station, Pune. The basic principle of this technique is if more number of aerosols exists in the atmosphere then more scattering takes place. Twilight observations have been carried out manually during the period 1 January 2009 to 30 December 2011 to study the vertical distribution of aerosols. The twilight scattering method yields the reasonable, qualitative picture of the vertical distribution of aerosols from about 6km to a maximum of 350km. This being a passive technique, clear sky conditions are preferable for obtaining the vertical profiles of aerosols. But in this study an attempt has also been made to conduct experiment during cloudy sky conditions.