Assessment of the aerosol products from the SeaWiFS and MODIS ocean color missions

The aerosol products derived from the ocean color missions SeaWiFS, MODIS Aqua and Terra are compared with field measurements from globally distributed AERONET sites. Validation statistics are found consistent for the three missions. The median absolute relative difference between SeaWiFS and AERONET aerosol optical thickness tau_a is approximately 20% at all bands while it is slightly higher for both MODIS products (between 20% and 28%). This is associated with a larger relative bias (median relative difference between satellite and AERONET tau_a) for these missions, of the order of +15%. With respect to previous versions of the processor applied to these missions, a noticeable improvement is seen in the representation of the spectral dependence of tau_a. The bias found for the Angstrom exponent varies from -0.08 to +0.13 for the three missions.

MELIN Frederic;  ZIBORDI Giuseppe;  HOLBEN B.; 

2013-08-13

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC

JRC76604

1545-598X,   

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6450047,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC76604,   

10.1109/LGRS.2012.2235408,