Determination of Saharan dust radiance and chlorophyll from CZCS imagery

This paper presents an algorithm, called the two-component method, to distinguish between two aerosol types in a remote color-scanner image and to determine their relative concentrations by observing the radiance contribution from each aerosol type at the satellite. The algorithm is applied to data from a time series of CZCS orbits during which both the Saharan dust and a bluish haze due to chlorophyll presence have been observed in the coastal zone. The results are compared with in situ measurements and to values derived from CZCS imagery by single-component methods, showing reasonable agreement between in situ measurements and values estimated by the two-component method. In imagery derived using single-component methods, the aerosol and chlorophyll fields appeared confounded in imagery where several types of aerosol were present.