Validation of aerosol products from AATSR and MERIS/AATSR synergy algorithms—Part 1: Global Evaluation.

• Published in: Remote Sensing
• Main Authors: Che, Yahui, Mei, Linlu, Xue, Yong, Guang, Jie, She, Lu, Li, Ying
• Other Authors: University of Derby, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Bremen, Ningxia University
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MPDI 2018
• Subjects: Big Data analytics; Aerosol Robotic Network
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10545/623009; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10091414

The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Aerosol Climate Change Initiative (CCI) project intends to exploit the robust, long-term, global aerosol optical thickness (AOT) dataset from Europe’s satellite observations. Newly released Swansea University (SU) aerosol products include AATSR retrieval and synergy between AATSR and MERIS with a spatial resolution of 10 km. In this study, both AATSR retrieval (SU/AATSR) and AATSR/MERIS synergy retrieval (SU/synergy) products are validated globally using Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) observations for March, June, September, and December 2008, as suggested by the Aerosol-CCI project. The analysis includes the impacts of cloud screening, surface parameterization, and aerosol type selections for two products under different surface and atmospheric conditions. The comparison between SU/AATSR and SU/synergy shows very accurate and consistent global patterns. The global evaluation using AERONET shows that the SU/AATSR product exhibits slightly better agreement with AERONET than the SU/synergy product. SU/synergy retrieval overestimates AOT for all surface and aerosol conditions. SU/AATSR data is much more stable and has better quality; it slightly underestimates fine-mode dominated and absorbing AOTs yet slightly overestimates coarse-mode dominated and non-absorbing AOTs. N/A