Centroid values of aerosol optical properties for 8 sub-types based in AERONET inversion data (1993–2018)

In this project, we adapted our previously defined 5 aerosol optical typology scheme (Hamill et al. 2016) to result in a more discriminating 8 aerosol typology scheme (Giordano 2019). Previously we presented an aerosol classification based upon AERONET level 2.0 almucantar retrieval products from the period 1993 to 2012. In the initial phases of this research, we opto-physically identified five major types of Bulk Columnar Aerosol (BCA) based solely upon intensive optical properties of spectral Single Scattering Albedo (SSA), spectral Indices of Refraction (real – RRI and imaginary – IRI), and two Angstrom Exponents (extinction – EAE and absorption – AAE). These BCA were classified as Maritime Aerosol, Dust Aerosol, Urban Industrial Aerosol, Biomass Burning Aerosol, and Mixed Aerosol. The classification of a particular observation as one of these aerosol types is determined by its five-dimensional Mahalanobis distance (MD) to the centroid of each reference cluster (itself a 5-D hyperell..., Methodology of Data collection:
We started from a complete fresh download of the entire AERONET set of all sites for the V2 Inversion product [now in V3 available at [https://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/new_web/download_all_v3_inversions.html], capturing the Level 2.0 Almucantar product that includes all points for each site -- not averages. The original package was obtained as a zip archive named in this fashion: \"INV_PFN_Level2_All_Points_V3.tar.gz\".  The package was unzipped to make available all records for each AERONET site.
Data Cleaning: 
The complete set of files is operated on by a simple C-Shell script to remove all individual retrievals from each site that contained records of either \"NAN\" or \"- 99999999\" for any field other than the \"aeronet site\" name as a text field.  Subsequently, we imposed our minimum number of complete records criteria such that any AERONET station that did not report a minimum of 200 complete retrievals as removed. These generally refer to as qualifying sit..., The original author/creator of this database [M.E. Giordano] holds and retains all rights to its use [as it was a copy-protected student work in a Doctoral dissertation], and shares these rights via Dryad's Creative Commons License with the new readers of this work.  The author only respectfully requests that proper citation of the work be given, and derivative works attribute the original author. The only code file attached to this work [Cleanup.csh] is an example and may be used as such.
Only the file named \"8AerosolOpticalPropertiesTypology5Dbasis_CENTROIDS.xlsx\"  requires specific software such as MS ExcelTM, LibreOfficeTM, or OpenOfficeTM to be opened and examined.   The remaining files are in comma-separated value CSV (UTF8 comma delimited), space-separated values (.txt), and tab-separated values (.dat).
Some suggested uses:

This data is likely to be used by those importing the specific aerosol reference standard centroid value to be compared with aerosol measurements at a specif...