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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ARD</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Aerosol Research Discussions</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ARD</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Aerosol Research Discuss.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<publisher><publisher-name></publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/ar-2026-39</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>AeroMiG: Multi-modal Inverse-Gamma modeling for aerosol particle number size distributions</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Rahman</surname>
<given-names>Abdur</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3244-2631</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kangasluoma</surname>
<given-names>Juha</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1639-1187</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mikkonen</surname>
<given-names>Santtu</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0595-0657</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hussein</surname>
<given-names>Tareq</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Petäjä</surname>
<given-names>Tuukka</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1881-9044</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Tarkoma</surname>
<given-names>Sasu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zaidan</surname>
<given-names>Martha Arbayani</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6348-1230</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Forestry and Technology, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>30</day>
<month>10</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>41</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Abdur Rahman et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://ar.copernicus.org/preprints/ar-2026-39/">This article is available from https://ar.copernicus.org/preprints/ar-2026-39/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://ar.copernicus.org/preprints/ar-2026-39/ar-2026-39.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://ar.copernicus.org/preprints/ar-2026-39/ar-2026-39.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Aerosol particles play a critical role in air quality, human health, and climate processes, making their accurate characterization essential. One common way to represent aerosol populations is through particle number size distributions (PNSDs), which describe the concentration of particles across different mobility diameters. However, these distributions are often highly skewed, heavy-tailed, and multi-modal, posing significant challenges for conventional fitting approaches. In this study, we propose a robust parametric framework (AeroMiG) for modeling PNSDs using Inverse-Gamma mixture distributions. The method represents observed size distributions as a superposition of multiple Inverse-Gamma components, enabling flexible modeling of asymmetric and heavy-tailed structures that are not well captured by widely-used log-Gaussian based approaches. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using real-world data from three measurement stations. Results are assessed using multiple criteria, including predictive accuracies, computational efficiency, and a composite score summarizing overall model quality. Comparative analysis against a widely used Aerosol Multi-mode log-Gaussian (AeroMG) demonstrates that the AeroMiG framework consistently achieves improved fitting accuracy, lower error, and faster computation. The proposed approach provides a reliable and computationally efficient solution for modeling complex aerosol size distributions, with potential applications in real-time air quality monitoring and data-driven environmental analysis.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="41"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Research Council of Finland</funding-source>
<award-id>355330</award-id>
<award-id>364223</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Research Council of Finland</funding-source>
<award-id>353218</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs3">
<funding-source>Research Council of Finland</funding-source>
<award-id>356134</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs4">
<funding-source>Research Council of Finland</funding-source>
<award-id>325022</award-id>
<award-id>352968</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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<back>
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</article>