Aerosol optical thickness retrieval over land from MODIS data on remote sensing information service grid node

Abstract

The signal at the top of the atmosphere will certainly contain information about both the surface and the atmosphere. To derive the geophysical parameters from satellites remote sensing images, the atmospheric effects must be decoupled. Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT), an important aerosol optical property, should be correctly determined to remove the atmospheric effect. The retrieval process is great time-consuming and the EMS memory required is too large for a personal computing to run efficiently. Therefore, to facilitate the process smoothly, SYNTAM model is used to retrieve AOT over a wide range of land including China and one European area from MODIS data on the Remote Sensing Information Service Grid Node (RSIN, http://www.tgp.ac.cn) deployed at Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences. AOT retrieval results show that the RSIN Grid service is high efficient and has the potential to be applied to the remote sensing parameter inversion. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.