Surface reflectance ratios between visible and infrared bands of satellite images over land areas in Japan for retrieval of aerosol optical thickness

Surface reflectance ratios between visible and infrared bands are determined for land areas in Japan from Terra MODIS images and from the ground-measured aerosol optical thickness (AOT). For validation, the resulting ratios are used to retrieve the AOT from the Terra ASTER and Landsat ETM+ images, leading to satisfactory agreement between the satellite-retrieved and ground-measured aerosol optical thickness values.