NASA Particle and Single-Scattering Database (PaSS-DB) in Support of Particulate Matter Retrievals

A significant portion of the atmospheric particulate matters are irregular without symmetry, e.g., dust particles, ice crystals, snowflakes, etc. Some of them are of heterogeneous composition, e.g., melting hydrometeors and droplets with inclusions. Solving the electromagnetic scattering problem for these particles are computationally intensive. It becomes impractical and very inefficient to repeatedly solve the same problem. Moreover, due to the lack of symmetry, every orientation of the particle has a unique solution, generating considerably greater volumes of data than the solutions for particles with nice symmetry. Storing the solutions and making them accessible is far more sensible, economical, and thus sustainable. The Particle and Single-Scattering Database, PaSS-DB, initiative aims to catalog, warehouse, and disseminate these atmospheric particles and their electromagnetic scattering solutions using an enterprise-grade database management system and a web interface. We report the early progress of the effort in this presentation.