Other Names

Back Scatter

Definition

It is a measure of the scattering in the backward direction ( i.e. towards the incident direction, at an scattering angle of 180 deg., sometimes also meant for scattering at an angle larger than 90 deg. ) for the light encountering the atmospheric aerosol particles.
In radiative transfer studies, back scattering ratio is defined as:

Where μ is the cosine of the scattering angle
and P is the scattering Phase function.

Applications

(1) Computation of Scattering Phase function	(3) Radiative Transfer Model
(2) Characterization of Aerosol Particles	(4) Earth Radiation Budget Study

Other sources for data

1. AERONET (Ground-based Aerosol Robotic Network)