Improved cloud and snow screening in MAIAC aerosol retrievals using spectral and spatial analysis

Date

2012-04-27

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Lyapustin, A., Y. Wang, I. Laszlo, and S. Korkin. “Improved Cloud and Snow Screening in MAIAC Aerosol Retrievals Using Spectral and Spatial Analysis.” Atmospheric Measurement Techniques 5, no. 4 (April 27, 2012): 843–50. https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-5-843-2012.

Rights

This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain

Subjects

Abstract

An improved cloud/snow screening technique in the Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) algorithm is described. It is implemented as part of MAIAC aerosol retrievals based on analysis of spectral residuals and spatial variability. Comparisons with AERONET aerosol observations and a large-scale MODIS data analysis show strong suppression of aerosol optical thickness outliers due to unresolved clouds and snow. At the same time, the developed filter does not reduce the aerosol retrieval capability at high 1 km resolution in strongly inhomogeneous environments, such as near centers of the active fires. Despite significant improvement, the optical depth outliers in high spatial resolution data are and will remain the problem to be addressed by the application-dependent specialized filtering techniques.