Advancements in the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) Version 3 database – automated near-real-time quality control algorithm with improved cloud screening for Sun photometer aerosol optical depth (AOD) measurements ...

• Main Authors: Giles, David M., Sinyuk, Alexander, Sorokin, Mikhail G., Schafer, Joel S., Smirnov, Alexander, Slutsker, Ilya, Eck, Thomas F., Holben, Brent N., Lewis, Jasper R., Campbell, James R., Welton, Ellsworth J., Korkin, Sergey V., Lyapustin, Alexei I.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union 2019
• Subjects: aerosol robotic network AERONET; aerosol optical depth AOD; cloud-screening methodology; Aerosol Robotic Network
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.13016/m2eykc-7hyo; http://mdsoar.org/handle/11603/12785

The Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) has provided highly accurate, ground-truth measurements of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) using Cimel Electronique Sun–sky radiometers for more than 25 years. In Version 2 (V2) of the AERONET database, the near-real-time AOD was semiautomatically quality controlled utilizing mainly cloud-screening methodology, while additional AOD data contaminated by clouds or affected by instrument anomalies were removed manually before attaining quality-assured status (Level 2.0). The large growth in the number of AERONET sites over the past 25 years resulted in significant burden to the manual quality control of millions of measurements in a consistent manner. The AERONET Version 3 (V3) algorithm provides fully automatic cloud screening and instrument anomaly quality controls. All of these new algorithm updates apply to near-real-time data as well as post-field-deployment processed data, and AERONET reprocessed the database in 2018. A full algorithm redevelopment provided the ...