Model Selection in Atmospheric Remote Sensing with Application to Aerosol Retrieval from DSCOVR/EPIC. Part 2: Numerical Analysis

An algorithm for retrieving aerosol parameters by taking into account the uncertainty in aerosol model selection is applied to the retrieval of aerosol optical thickness and aerosol layer height from synthetic measurements from the EPIC sensor onboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory. The synthetic measurements are generated using aerosol models derived from AERONET measurements at different sites, while other commonly used aerosol models, such as OPAC, GOCART, OMI, and MODIS databases are used in the retrieval. The numerical analysis is focused on the estimation of retrieval errors when the true aerosol model is unknown. We found that the best aerosol model is the one with a value of the asymmetry parameter and an angular variation of the phase function around the viewing direction that is close to the values corresponding to the reference aerosol model.