I am working on a project on Radiative Forcing due to Black Carbon. The aethelometer data is Mass Concentration but the input needed for OPAC is number density. Is there default conversion value or any other method for this purpose ?
There is a conversion factor commonly used for converting opacity into weight (see link). But there still one step missing - converting opacity into number. You will need the size distribution.
I actually found in a paper that the OPAC urban model considers BC number density of 130000 particles /cm3 corresponds to 7.8 μ /cm3. I dont have the size distribution so in case I don't find any other method will use this value.