Generalized treatment of particulate scattering in Dobson ozone spectrophotometer calculations

In the calculation of atmospheric total ozone from ultraviolet spectrometry, the particulate scattering term is usually regarded as a linear function of wavelength. A method due to R. E. Basher, in which it is treated as a quadratic polynomial, is here generalized to include a polynomial of any degree, and the quadratic approximation is seen to be somewhat arbitrary. It is shown that the determination of the quadratic and higher coefficients from Dobson spectrophotometer observations is limited by systematic errors of measurement, and that these errors are doubled or trebled by attempting to correct even for the quadratic coefficient. It is concluded that Basher's method of calculation is at present inadvisable.