A Comparison of MODIS Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) Retrievals with AERONET data
An understanding of the amount and type of aerosols present in the atmosphere is required for the atmospheric correction of satellite imagery. A sensitivity analysis of the atmospheric inputs to the MOD09 software has shown that uncertainty in the estimation of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) has the greatest impact on the accuracy of atmospheric correction of MODIS data. The MOD09 software used at The Australian Centre for Remote Sensing (ACRES) for the generation of surface reflectance products estimates the AOD of the atmosphere at the time of image acquisition. We compared AOD measurements retrieved from MODIS with near-simultaneous Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) data over three sites in Australia, using MODIS surface reflectance products held in the ACRES archive for the year 2005. The results of the study provide an important independent validation of ACRES MODIS Surface Reflectance Products. This procedure may be applied to long time series MODIS data for estimating the accuracy of MOD09 retrieved AOD.