Remer, L. A., D. Tanre, Y. J. Kaufman, C. Ichoku, S. Mattoo, R. Levy, D. A. Chu, B. N. Holben, O. Dubovik, A. Smirnov, J. V. Martins, R.-R. Li, and Z. Ahmad, 2002: Validation of MODIS aerosol retrieval over ocean. Geophys Res. Lett., 29, doi: 10.1029/2001GL013204.
With the launch of the MODIS sensor on the Terra spacecraft,
new data sets of the global distribution and properties of aerosol are
being retrieved, and need to be validated and analyzed. A system has
been put in place to generate spatial statistics (mean, standard
deviation, direction and rate of spatial variation, and spatial
correlation coefficient) of the MODIS aerosol parameters over
more than 100 validation sites spread around the globe.
Corresponding statistics are also computed from temporal subsets
of AERONET-derived aerosol data. The means and standard
deviations of identical parameters from MODIS and AERONET
are compared. Although, their means compare favorably, their
standard deviations reveal some influence of surface effects on the
MODIS aerosol retrievals over land, especially at low aerosol
loading. The direction and rate of spatial variation from MODIS are
used to study the spatial distribution of aerosols at various locations
either individually or comparatively. This paper introduces the
methodology for generating and analyzing the data sets used by the
two MODIS aerosol validation papers in this issue.
