Improved retrieval algorithms for aerosols, clouds and water vapor content from satellite data are described. A POLDER sensor, mounted on the Earth observation satellite ADEOS in 1996, is a unique sensor, which can gather multi-directional (up to 14) polarization measurements of one target. The POLDER sensor has been mounted on the satellite ADEOS-Ⅱlaunched on 14 December in 2002. Aerosol and cloud properties are derived from the POLDER polarization data over the land and the ocean. In addition POLDER data in the near infrared wavelengths are available to estimate the total column content of atmospheric water vapor. It is well known that the thermal data are useful for retrieval of cloud properties and water vapor contents over the ocean. Therefore combination use of ADEOS/POLDER and OCTS is considered for retrieval of atmospheric hydrologic substances in this study. The satellite derived results are validated with the ground-based data as AERONET. The obtained global maps of aerosol and cloud properties, and water vapor content are compared with one another. It is shown that column number density of aerosols has a negative correlation with the effective radius of cloud particles and proportionally correlates with the optical thickness and the column number density of cloud particles. These results confirm the indirect effect of aerosols, namely aerosols play sufficient role as cloud condensation nuclei.
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