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Will aerosol measurements from Terra and Aqua Polar Orbiting satellites represent the daily aerosol abundance and properties?
Author(s) -
Kaufman Yoram J.,
Holben Brent N.,
Tanré Didier,
Slutsker Ilya,
Smirnov Alexander,
Eck Thomas F.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2000gl011968
Subject(s) - aeronet , aerosol , radiative forcing , environmental science , forcing (mathematics) , satellite , atmospheric sciences , radiative transfer , climatology , meteorology , remote sensing , geography , physics , geology , quantum mechanics , astronomy
The Terra and Aqua missions will help quantify aerosol radiative forcing of climate by providing innovative measurements of the aerosol daily spatial distribution and identifying dust, smoke and regional pollution. However, these measurements are acquired at specific times of the day. To what extent can such measurements represent the daily average aerosol forcing of climate? We answer this question using 7 years of data from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) of 50–70 global ground‐based instruments. AERONET measures the aerosol spectral optical thickness and the total precipitable water vapor every 15 minutes throughout the day. With a data set of 1/2 million measurements, AERONET demonstrates that Terra and Aqua aerosol measurements can represent the annual average value within 2% error. This excellent Terra representation of the daily average optical thickness is independent of the particle size or range of the optical thickness. This finding should facilitate ingest of satellite aerosol measurements in models that calculate radiative forcing and predict climate change.