Effective dose coefficients for inhaled radon and its progeny: ICRP’s approach

The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) has recently published three reports on radon exposure: (i) Publication 115 on lung cancer risks from radon and radon progeny [1], (ii) Publication 126 on radiological protection against radon exposure [2] and (iii) Publication 137 on Occupational Intakes of Radionuclides (OIR), Part 3 [3]. The latter document gives doses coefficients for the inhalation of radon, thoron and their airborne progeny as well as recommendations for their use for the protection of workers. As with all other radionuclides, the effective dose coefficients are calculated with ICRP reference biokinetic and dosimetric models. Sufficient information and dosimetric data are given so that site-specific dose coefficients can be calculated based on measured aerosol parameter values.

Aerosol radiative forcing during African desert dust events (2005–2010) over South-Eastern Spain

The instantaneous values of the aerosol radiative forcing (ARF) at the surface and the top of the atmosphere (TOA) were calculated during desert dust events occurred at Granada (Southeastern Spain) from 2005 to 2010. For that, the SBDART radiative transfer model was utilized to simulate the global irradiance values (0.3–2.8 μm) at the surface and TOA using as input the aerosol properties derived from a CIMEL sun-photometer measurements and an inversion methodology that uses the sky radiance measurements in principal plane configuration and non-spherical particle shapes approximation. The SBDART modeled global irradiances at surface have been successfully validated against experimental measurements obtained by CM-11 pyranometer, indicating the reliability of the radiative transfer model used in this work for the ARF calculations. The monthly ARF values at surface ranged from −32 W m−2 to −46 W m−2, being larger in April and July than in the rest of months. The seasonal ARF evolution was inconsistent with seasonal aerosol optical depth (AOD) variation due to the effects induced by other aerosol parameter such as the single scattering albedo. The ARF at TOA changed from −9 W m−2 to −29 W m−2. Thus, the atmospheric ARF values (ARF at TOA minus ARF at surface) ranged from +15 to +35 W m−2. These results suggest that the African dust caused local atmospheric heating over the study location. The instantaneous aerosol radiative forcing efficiency (ARFE), aerosol radiative forcing per unit of AOD (440 nm), at surface and TOA during African desert dust events was evaluated according to the desert dust source origins. The ARFE values at surface were relatively high (in absolute term) and were −157 ± 20 (Sector A), −154 ± 23 (Sector B), and −147 ± 23 (Sector C) W m−2. These values were larger than many of the values found in literature which could be due to the presence of more absorbing atmospheric particles during African desert dust intrusions over our study area. Finally, our ARF computations showed good agreement with the corresponding ARF calculated by AERONET network.

A new regularized inversion method for the retrieval of stratospheric aerosol size distributions applied to 16 years of SAGE II data (1984–2000): method, results and validation

We apply a regularization method for the optical inversion of SAGE II aerosol extinction profiles and derive the particle number density N, the mode radius r and width s of an effective lognormal aerosol size distribution. The constraint applied to the inversion scheme allows us to appreciably enhance the stability of the solution. Therefore, because of the disposal of a more stable inversion scheme and of the wide extend of SAGE II data in time and space, we were able to improve the estimation of the aerosol parameter profiles with respect to previous published retrievals and, hence, our knowledge of the aerosol distribution characteristics in space and time. After presenting the inversion method and retrieved profiles concerning the particle number density profile over the time period 1984–2000, we validate our results by means of data derived from both in situ and remote spectral measurements. We also discuss the limits of the comparison between the various types of measurements due to their respective particularities. The validation gives a satisfying agreement with other data sources for N and r as long as the mode radius is not too small compared to the shortest SAGE II wavelength, whereas s appears to be less easily retrieved with a good accuracy.Key words. Atmospheric composition and structure (aerosols and particles; middle atmosphere – composition and chemistry; volcanic effects)