LBA-ECO TG-03: AERONET Aerosol Measurements in Brazil

22 ground-based sites in Brazil provide aerosol optical thickness measurements from 1993 to 2005. This dataset contains Level 2.0 quality-assured and cloud-screened data from the AERONET federation's standardized CIMEL sunphotometer network. It supports the assessment of aerosol properties and validation of satellite retrievals.

Use Cases

• Validating satellite aerosol optical depth retrievals based on ground-based measurements.
• Studying long-term aerosol trends and climatology in Brazil based on a 13-year time series.
• Assessing aerosol optical properties for atmospheric correction of satellite imagery.
• Analyzing spatial variability of aerosols across 22 geographically diverse sites.

Strengths

• Contains quality-assured Level 2.0 data, which is cloud-screened and calibrated.
• Covers a 13-year time range (1993-2005) for longitudinal analysis.
• Data is from a standardized global network (AERONET), ensuring instrument and processing consistency.

Limitations

• Specific column names and row counts are not provided in the available metadata.
• Conflicting last-update dates exist between sources (2005 vs. 2026), suggesting potential metadata staleness.
• The dataset's spatial coverage is limited to 22 sites within Brazil.

Provenance

Source

AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) federation, part of the LBA-ECO project.

Collection Method

Ground-based remote sensing using standardized CIMEL sunphotometers.

Time Range

1993-2005

Freshness

2026-04-10 01:30:21.764064 (from datagov, but conflicts with 2005 date from nasa_earthdata)

Geography

22 sites in Brazil