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<p>Knowledge on the refractive index of ambient aerosols can help reduce the uncertainties in estimating aerosol radiative forcing. A new method is proposed to retrieve the size-resolved real part of the refractive index (RRI). The main principle of deriving the RRI is measuring the scattering intensity by a single-particle soot photometer (SP2) of size-selected aerosols. This method is validated by a series of calibration experiments using the components of the known RRI. The retrieved size-resolved RRI covers a wide range, from 200 to 450&thinsp;nm, with uncertainty of less than 0.02. Measurements of the size-resolved RRI can improve the understanding of the aerosol radiative effects.</p>