Space measurements of tropospheric aerosols

A global-scale ground-truth experiment was conducted in the summer of 1980 with the AVHRR sensor on NOAA-6 to investigate the relationship between the upwelling visible radiance and the aerosol optical thickness over oceans at different sites around the globe. The possibility of using inland bodies of water such as rivers, lakes and reservoirs has been recently investigated using the Landsat MSS7 (approximately 0.9 micron) channel. This upwelling near-infrared radiance is less influenced than the visible radiance by the suspended matter generally found in the inland bodies of water, and by the adjacency effect of the surrounding higher albedo land. It is found that the water turbidity has more influence than the adjacency effect and reduces the effectiveness of the technique for inland observations.