Satellite-Visibility Aerosol Single Scattering Albedo (SV-SSA)

An algorithm is developed to retrieve SSA using joint MODIS and surface visibility measurements. MODIS can only provide the measurements of reflected solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere, which are only capable of retrieving aerosol optical depth (AOD) on the basis of assumed SSA. By combining MODIS measured TOA apparent reflectance with ground visibility as well as other auxiliary parameters, this study develops a random forest based algorithm to retrieve global SSA using the joint measurements. The algorithm is applied to generate a global aerosol SSA dataset with extensive coverage over land, which can capture the seasonal and spatial SSA variability for different aerosol types, especially over East Asia, Southeast Asia, and West Africa.