Comparative analysis of aerosol retrievals from MODIS, OMI and MISR over Sahara Region

MODIS is a wide field-of-view sensor providing daily global observations of the Earth. Currently, MODIS aerosol retrievals over bright deserts are performed with the Deep Blue (DB) Algorithm which uses an ancillary angular distribution model of surface reflectance developed from the time series of clear-sky MODIS observations. Recently, a new Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) algorithm has been developed for MODIS. MAIAC uses a time series analysis and processing of groups of pixels to perform simultaneous retrievals of aerosol properties and surface bidirectional reflectance at high 1 km resolution. In this work, we will provide a comparative analysis of DB, MAIAC, MISR and OMI aerosol products over bright deserts of northern Africa.