Aerosol optical properties derived from solar spectrum measurements and their application to atmospheric correction of satellite data

In our previous work, we developed a method in which ground-based, spectral measurements of direct and scattered solar radiation are employed to retrieve optical properties of tropospheric aerosols, using the three component aerosol model (TCAM), as well as column amount of molecular constituents of the atmosphere such as water vapor. We observed solar spectra under clear-sky conditions between Aug, 2007 and May, 2009 at Chiba, Japan and derived the seasonal trend of aerosol characteristics around the site. In this work, we apply these aerosol optical parameters to the atmospheric correction of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite data to obtain seasonal maps of ground surface reflectance and aerosol optical depth around Chiba. The surface reflectance (at 550 nm wavelength) derived from the TCAM model is 0.05 - 0.09, exhibiting seasonal variation depending on the vegetation coverage. As compared with the results based on standard aerosol models such as the maritime or continental model, the difference among models is generally small ( 0.005) in summer. In addition, we show preliminary results of retrieving column amount of molecules (H 2 O, O 3 , CO 2 , and CH 4 ) from skylight spectra observed by the schemes of multi-axis differential optical absorption spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS).