Levy, R. C., L. Remer, S. Mattoo, E. Vermote, and Y. J. Kaufman, 2007: Second-generation algorithm for retrieving aerosol properties over land from MODIS spectral reflectance. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D13211, doi:10.1029/2006JD007811..
Since first light in early 2000, operational global quantitative retrievals of aerosol
properties over land have been made from MODIS observed spectral reflectance. These
products have been continuously evaluated and validated, and opportunities for
improvements have been noted. We have replaced the original algorithm by improving
surface reflectance assumptions, the aerosol model optical properties and the radiative
transfer code used to create the lookup tables. The new algorithm (known as Version 5.2
or V5.2) performs a simultaneous inversion of two visible (0.47 and 0.66 μm) and one
shortwave-IR (2.12 μm) channel, making use of the coarse aerosol information content
contained in the 2.12 μm channel. Inversion of the three channels yields three nearly
independent parameters, the aerosol optical depth (
