Last edited 14 Apr 2025

Aerosol optical depth

Climate Change 2021 – The Physical Science Basis, Annex VII: Glossary, written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, states in relation to aerosol optical depth (AOD): ‘Wavelength-dependent aerosol optical depth is a measure of the aerosol contribution to extinction of top-of-the-atmosphere solar intensity measured at the ground. AOD is unitless.’

It defines fine-mode aerosol optical depth as: ‘Aerosol optical depth due to aerosol particles smaller than 1 μm in radius.’

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