Developments of aerosol retrieval algorithm for Geostationary Environmental Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) and the retrieval accuracy test

A scanning UV-Visible spectrometer, the GEMS (Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer) onboard the GEO-KOMPSAT2B (Geostationary Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite) is planned to be launched in geostationary orbit in 2018. The GEMS employs hyper-spectral imaging with 0.6 nm resolution to observe solar backscatter radiation in the UV and Visible range. In the UV range, the low surface contribution to the backscattered radiation and strong interaction between aerosol absorption and molecular scattering can be advantageous in retrieving aerosol optical properties such as aerosol optical depth (AOD) and single scattering albedo (SSA). By taking the advantage, the OMI UV aerosol algorithm has provided information on the absorbing aerosol (Torres et al., 2007; Ahn et al., 2008). This study presents a UV-VIS algorithm to retrieve AOD and SSA from GEMS. The algorithm is based on the general inversion method, which uses pre-calculated look-up table with assumed aerosol properties and measurement condition. To obtain the retrieval accuracy, the error of the look-up table method occurred by the interpolation of pre-calculated radiances is estimated by using the reference dataset, and the uncertainties about aerosol type and height are evaluated. Also, the GEMS aerosol algorithm is tested with measured normalized radiance from OMI, a provisional data set for GEMS measurement, and the results are compared with the values from AERONET measurements over Asia. Additionally, the method for simultaneous retrieve of the AOD and aerosol height is discussed.