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2007 AGU Fall Meeting, December 10-14, San Francisco, CA
Intercomparison of Atmospheric Aerosol Climatologies
Obtained From Passive Satellite Instruments
1Leptoukh, G., 2Zubko, V., 2Gopalan, A., 1Remer, L.
1NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 208771, United States
2RSIS, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
Atmospheric aerosols show a complex relationship with the climate system. The research of the global effects of aerosol on the climate system is currently in a quantitative phase due to a increasing network of in situ, ground and space-based sensors with some of them in use for long time. In this paper we focus on the spatial and temporal variability of aerosol properties as retrieved by the passive satellite instruments like Terra-MODIS, Terra-MISR, Aqua-MODIS and Parasol-POLDER. Previous studies (Mishchenko et al., 2007) have found that differences between the aerosol climatologies developed from the various passive satellite sensors on both the global and local scale and over both short and long term periods exceeds the corresponding individual uncertainty estimates. For this study we have worked with the latest versions of the Daily Global 1 deg. X 1 deg. Level-3 Aerosol Product from the MODIS, MISR and POLDER instruments. We have derived a global and regional monthly mean- climatology for a few key aerosol parameters (e.g Aerosol Optical Depth, Angstrom Exponent, Fine Mode Fraction). We then looked at the quantitative differences in the long term global and regional statistics of these aerosol parameters. The impact of quality and pixel-weighting on these statistics has been examined and it was found that there can be significant differences in the resulting global aerosol climatologies. Differences with the previous version of MODIS data have been also examined. We also address various statistical issues in working with these aerosol parameters within the framework of the GES DISC Interactive Online Visualization and Analysis System (GIOVANNI).
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov
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Atmos Composition
