Aerosol remote sensing over oceans

Abstract

A global detection of aerosol parameters is essential to improve our understanding of the role of aerosols in the earth climate. The new generation of earth observation satellites, such as the ESA Environmental Satellite, ENVISAT, which will have onboard the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer, will enhance significantly the accuracy of the estimation of tropospheric aerosols from space. The main goals of this investigation are the determination of the aerosol optical thickness and the discrimination of different aerosol types by using multispectral radiance measurements. Radiative transfer calculations were used to simulate the three proposed channels of MERIS in the red and near infrared region (750-1040 nm) which are dedicated to aerosol retrieval. The radiative transfer model for a combined atmosphere ocean system is based on the Matrix-Operator-Method. The assumption of only one type of aerosol within the evaluation process leads to errors of a factor of two in the estimation of the aerosol optical thickness. In areas where several aerosols may be expected an investigation of the aerosol type is necessary. First results indicate that the aerosol type can be estimated quite well from MERIS measurements. © 1995.