NOAA AVHRR derived Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) over Land: A comparison with AERONET Data

[1] Soufflet, V., D. Tanre, A. Royer, and N.T. O'Neill, (1997) Remote sensing of aerosols over boreal forest and lake water from AVHRR data. Remote Sensing of Environment, 60, pp: 22-34. [2] Goodrum, G., K.B. Kidwell, and W. Winston, (1999) NOAA KLM user's guide, National Environmental Satellite, Date, and Information Services (NESDIS). [3] Key, J., (2002) The Cloud and Surface Parameter Retrieval (CASPR) System for Polar AVHRR User's Guide, Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of Wisconsin, 1225 West Dayton St., Madison, WI 53562, 61 pp. [4] Holben, B.N., T.F. Eck, I. Slutsker, D. Tanre, J.P. Buis, A. Setzer, E. Vermote, J.A. Reagan, Y.J. Kaufman, T. Nakajima, F. Lavenu, I. Jankowiak, and A. Smirnov, (1998) AERONETA federated instrument network and data archive for aerosol characterization. Remote Sensing of Environment, 66, pp: 1-16. [5] Knapp, K.R., and L.L. Stowe, (2002) Evaluating the Potential for Retrieving Aerosol Optical Depth over Land from AVHRR Pathfinder Atmosphere Data. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 59 (3), pp: 279– 293. [6] Rahman, H., and G. Dedieu, (1994) SMAC: A simplified method for the atmospheric correction of satellite measurements in the solar spectrum. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 15 (1), pp: 123-143. [7] Zhao, T. X.-P., O. Dubovik, A. Smirnov, B. N. Holben, J. Sapper, C. Pietras, K. J. Voss, and R. Frouin (2004), Regional evaluation of an advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) twochannel aerosol retrieval algorithm. Journal of. Geophysical Research, 109, D02204, doi:10.1029/2003JD003817. [8] Chu, D. A., Y. J. Kaufman, G. Zibordi, J. D. Chern, J. Mao, C. Li, and B. N. Holben (2003). Global Monitoring of Air Pollution over Land from EOS-Terra MODIS. Journal of. Geophysical Research, 108, D21, 4661 doi:10.1029/2002JD003179. [9] Kaufman, Y.J., and C. Sendra, (1988) Algorithm for automatic atmospheric corrections to visible and nearIR satellite imagery. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 9 (8), pp: 1357-1381. Abstract: The aim of this study is the retrieval of aerosol optical depth (AOD) from NOAA AVHRR over land (Central Europe). Surface reflectance is estimated by extracting the minimum reflectance within intervals of the satellite zenith angle during the previous 45 days. However, the AVHRR retrieved AOD values still show a large amount of scatter when compared to AERONET data. A substantial improvement of the correlation is achieved by incorporating the standard deviation of the AOD within a 25km × 25km region into account. The correlation improves substantially and intercept and standard error decrease.