Properties and evolution of aerosols with size distributions having identical moments

It has been proposed that the properties and evolution of an aerosol can be represented by lower-order moments of its size distribution without requiring additional knowledge of the distribution itself. However, certain distributions, including the log-normal and modified gamma distributions widely used to represent aerosol size distributions, belong to classes of multiple distributions having identical sets of moments, a situation that brings into question the utility of moment-based representations of aerosol properties and dynamics. We compare aerosol properties and evolution for explicit dissimilar test distributions having identical moments. It is found that despite their dissimilarity (e.g. multimode vs single mode) these distributions exhibit virtually identical physical and optical properties and dynamics. This analysis allays the concern regarding applicability of moment-based representations of aerosol properties that arises out of the existence of sets of distributions exhibiting identical moments.