Developing an Aerosol Retrieval for Land, Ocean, and Littoral Zones Using the Next Generation Geostationary Observations

The Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) on the Himawari-8/9 and the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the GOES-R are the next generation geo-stationary sensors with the capability of multi-spectral, high spatial and geo-stationary observation over southeast Asia (AHI) and United States (GOES-R ABI). The long-term goal of this project is to developaerosol algorithms for the AHI and ABI that can be applied to the littoral regions where the surface reflectance can vary significantly and cannot be assumed dark. This new algorithm will be integrated into the NOAA's Clouds from AVHRR Extended (CLAVR-x) framework providing near real time processing capability.The foundation for the algorithm is the dark target approach, developed for NASA’s Earth Observing System Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to retrieve aerosol properties. We will present multiple case study of AOD retrievals from geo-stationary (AHI and ABI) data over land, ocean and littoral zone, and inter-compare with collocated polar orbiting MODIS and VIIRS and ground based AERONET retrievals. Finally, we will discuss the challenges and potentials on geo-stationary aerosol retrieval methods to separate the surface reflectance from the aerosol signal using the multispectral capability of geo-stationary satellite with the ability to characterize the temporal variability of a given FOV. This research is supported by the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) Program.