Fusion of MODIS-MISR aerosol inversion for estimation of aerosol absorption

This paper presents an approach for estimating aerosol absorption by combining MODIS and MISR data. The approach uses a previously published concept based on combining clear and hazy days to retrieve aerosol absorption. It augments the existing approach by using multi-sensor data to improve the surface characterization and aerosol property retrieval. MODIS data are used to retrieve the aerosol optical thickness, whereas MISR data are first used to determine the surface properties on the clear day, and then to retrieve aerosol absorption on hazy days by using the derived surface properties as the ground boundary condition. The method is applied to two extreme cases of absorption in biomass burning situations: One case over Mongu (South Africa) and the other over Alta Floresta (Brazil). The range of single scattering albedo retrieved values is from 0.7 to 0.95. A comparison with AERONET independent estimates shows very good agreement (better than 0.02 on average) across the whole range.