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A variety of measurements have been used to evaluate the treatment of aerosol radiative properties and radiative impacts of aerosols simulated by the Model for Integrated Research on Atmospheric Global Exchanges (MIRAGE). This paper focuses on comparisons of simulated and measured aerosol optical depth (AOD). When the analyzed relative humidity is used to calculate aerosol water uptake in MIRAGE, the simulated AOD agrees with most surface measurements after cloudy conditions are filtered out and differences between model and station elevations are accounted for. Simulated AODs are low over sites in Brazil during the biomass burning season and over sites in central Canada during the wildfire season, which can be attributed to limitations in the organic and black carbon emissions data used by MIRAGE. The simulated AODs are mostly within a factor of two of satellite estimates, but MIRAGE simulates excessively high AODs off the east coast of the US and China, and too little dust off the coast of West Africa and in the Arabian Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]