Notice of RetractionAtmospheric aerosol optical properties over East Asia in spring

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

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The knowledge of aerosol properties at regional scale is important in understanding of the global climate change. In this study, the aerosol optical properties over East Asia in spring have been presented from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) measurements during 2001-2008. The averages of aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 440 nm varied in the range of 0.41-0.50 at Dunhuang, Korean and Japanese sites, and the maximum average AOD occurred in Beijing (0.91). The minimum value of Ångström exponent (α) occurred in Dunhuang with an average of 0.35 in spring of 2001 due to the presence of coarse mineral particles. The total averages of α in spring were about 0.66, 0.98 and 1.20 at Chinese, Korean and Japanese sites respectively. The fine modes of aerosol volume size distributions showed the highest peak around radius 0.09 μm in Dunhuang, and radius 0.11-0.19 μm in Beijing, Korean and Japanese sites. The coarse modes showed the maxima peak at radius about 2.2 μm in Dunhuang and Japanese sites, and 2.9-3.8 μm in Beijing and Korean sites. The coarse modes were obviously dominant in the aerosol size distribution of Chinese sites, especially in Dunhuang with the volume concentration ratio of coarse to fine modes being 17.5.