Introducing the 4.4 km spatial resolution Multi-Angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) aerosol product

摘要

The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR)instrument has been operational on the National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration (NASA) Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra satellite sinceearly 2000, creating an extensive data set of global Earth observations.Here we introduce the latest version of the MISR aerosol products. The level2 (swath) product, which is reported on a 4.4 km spatial grid, is designated as version 23 (V23) and contains retrieved aerosol optical depth (AOD) andaerosol particle property information derived from MISR's multi-angleobservations over both land and water. The changes from the previous versionof the algorithm (V22) have significant impacts on the data product and itsinterpretation. The V23 data set is created from two separate retrievalalgorithms that are applied over dark water and land surfaces, respectively.Besides increasing the horizontal resolution to 4.4 km compared with thecoarser 17.6 m resolution in V22 and streamlining the format and content,the V23 product has added geolocation information, pixel-level uncertaintyestimates, and improved cloud screening. MISR data can be obtained from theNASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center at https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/project/misr/misr_table (last access: 11 October 2019). Theversion number for the V23 level 2 aerosol product is F13_0023. The level 3 (gridded) aerosol product is still reported at0.5∘×0.5∘ spatial resolution with results aggregatedfrom the higher-resolution level 2 data. The format and content at level 3have also been updated to reflect the changes made at level 2. The level 3product associated with the V23 level 2 product version is designated asF15_0032. Both the level 2 and level 3 products are nowprovided in NetCDF format.