Effects of Different Types of Aerosols on Diffuse Radiation Based on Global AERONET

Abstract This study analyses the characteristics of the diffuse radiation (DSR) in the region of different types of aerosols and assesses the effect of aerosols on the DSR based on the AERONET aerosol data for the years 2010–2020. The results are as follows: the interannual trends of DSR and diffuse radiation fraction (DSRF) for all aerosol types in this study tend to coincide with the interannual trends of aerosol optical depth (AOD). Both AOD and solar zenith angle (SZA) are assessed to have higher feature significance for both DSR and DSRF during the period of the study, which indicates that AOD and SZA are important parameters affecting DSR and DSRF. The dust aerosols have a higher AOD (0.477), a higher scattering capacity (single scattering albedo (SSA) of 0.971) due to its components of mostly mineral sand and floating dust, and DSRF as high as 0.628 with an aerosol diffuse radiation effect (ADRE) of 194.942 W m −2 . Comparing with dust aerosols, although the feature importance assessment values of SSA and angstrom exponent (AE) for DSR are more remarkable for biomass burning aerosols, the reduction in ADRE by 69.768 W m −2 may be attributed to the relatively larger effect of absorptive fine‐particle‐dominated aerosols on DSR. To study the effects of different types of aerosols on radiation and to improve understanding and knowledge in the fields of photosynthesis, renewable energy use and air quality monitoring.