Development and assessment of a higher-spatial-resolution (4.4 km) MISR aerosol optical depth product using AERONET-DRAGON data

• Published in: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
• Main Authors: M. J. Garay, O. V. Kalashnikova, M. A. Bull
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2017
• Subjects: Physics; QC1-999; Chemistry; QD1-999; Aerosol Robotic Network
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-5095-2017; https://doaj.org/article/07525d809d8340618a3bb6ee9c6f6b2f

Since early 2000, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite has been acquiring data that have been used to produce aerosol optical depth (AOD) and particle property retrievals at 17.6 km spatial resolution. Capitalizing on the capabilities provided by multi-angle viewing, the current operational (Version 22) MISR algorithm performs well, with about 75 % of MISR AOD retrievals globally falling within 0.05 or 20 % × AOD of paired validation data from the ground-based Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). This paper describes the development and assessment of a prototype version of a higher-spatial-resolution 4.4 km MISR aerosol optical depth product compared against multiple AERONET Distributed Regional Aerosol Gridded Observations Network (DRAGON) deployments around the globe. In comparisons with AERONET-DRAGON AODs, the 4.4 km resolution retrievals show improved correlation ( r = 0. 9595), smaller RMSE (0.0768), reduced bias (−0.0208), and a larger fraction within the expected error envelope (80.92 %) relative to the Version 22 MISR retrievals.