## 5 Results of Aerosol Model and the Optical Properties Inter-Comparison
### Inter-Comparison of Aerosol Properties between CE318 and the VIIRS_EDR
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Station** & **SSA(f)** & **SSA(c)** & **SSA(Bi)** \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{**Beijing**} & CE318 & 0.95 & 0.72 & 0.93 \\  & VIIRS\_EDR & 0.97 & 0.81 & 0.96 \\  & Bias(VIIRS-CE318) & 0.02 & 0.09 & 0.03 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{**XiangHe**} & CE318 & 0.93 & 0.66 & 0.91 \\  & VIIRS\_EDR & 0.97 & 0.78 & 0.96 \\  & Bias & 0.04 & 0.12 & 0.05 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{**Xinglong**} & CE318 & 0.95 & 0.72 & 0.93 \\  & VIIRS\_EDR & 0.97 & 0.78 & 0.96 \\  & Bias & 0.02 & 0.06 & 0.03 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 6: The fine (f), coarse (c) and bi-mode (Bi) aerosol SSA at 440 nm for CE318 and the VIIRS_EDR during 2 May 2012–31 March 2014. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Station** & **Sensor** & **RI(r)** & **RI(i)** & **r(f)** & **\(\sigma\)(f)** & **V(f)** & **r(c)** & **\(\sigma\)(c)** & **V(c)** \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{**Beijing**} & CE318 & 1.49 & 0.0089 & 0.20 & 0.53 & 0.14 & 2.70 & 0.60 & 0.18 \\  & VIIRS\_EDR & 1.43 & 0.0043 & 0.19 & 0.44 & 0.13 & 3.15 & 0.69 & 0.19 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{**XiangHe**} & CE318 & 1.49 & 0.013 & 0.19 & 0.53 & 0.13 & 2.81 & 0.62 & 0.16 \\  & VIIRS\_EDR & 1.43 & 0.0053 & 0.19 & 0.41 & 0.15 & 3.50 & 0.74 & 0.10 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{**Xinglong**} & CE318 & 1.47 & 0.0083 & 0.22 & 0.56 & 0.10 & 2.84 & 0.61 & 0.10 \\  & VIIRS\_EDR & 1.43 & 0.0056 & 0.18 & 0.40 & 0.13 & 3.51 & 0.75 & 0.08 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 7: The average aerosol physical properties (at 440 nm) of CE318 and VIIRS_EDR during 2 May 2012–31 March 2014. VIIRS_EDR but lower for \(\sigma\)(c). The V(f) values of CE318 are lower than that of the VIIRS_EDR except for Beijing station. The V(c) of the VIIRS_EDR is comparable with that of CE318 except in XiangHe, which consists with the lowest accuracy rate of the M_VIIRS_EDR in XiangHe (Figure 3a). In Figure 4, the shapes generated by eight parameters (1, RI(r); 2, RI(i); 3, r(f); 4, \(\sigma\)(f); 5, V(f); 6, r(c); 7, \(\sigma\)(c); and 8, V(c)) for CE318 and the VIIRS_EDR differ from each other and each of them (CE318 and VIIRS_EDR) shows a different seasonal variation. For Beijing, CE318 shows similar shapes in summer and autumn but significantly different in spring and winter; higher RI(r) in spring and winter and higher RI(i) in winter. While the VIIRS_EDR shows two pairs of similar shapes; spring-summer and autumn-winter. As for XiangHe station, CE318 shapes are similar to Beijing's but the VIIRS_EDR shows some difference from Beijing's; autumn is not similar to winter but similar to spring and summer. As for Xinglong, CE318 shapes show a distinct difference in winter compared to XiangHe's due to the lower RI(r), RI(i) and r(c) and higher r(f), while the VIIRS_EDR shapes are similar to XiangHe's in all seasons. The significant differences of the aerosol microphysical properties between the VIIRS_EDR and CE318 over the NCP indicate that the aerosol microphysical properties in the VIIRS_EDR algorithm are not suitable over the NCP region. Furthermore, this also reflects that the five models based on the five AERONET stations in the reference [27] can not be applied globally.