NOAA's Climate Data Record provides aerosol optical thickness (AOT) at 0.63 micron wavelength retrieved from AVHRR satellite data. The dataset offers daily and monthly averaged products on a global 0.1 by 0.1 degree grid, totaling 1800x3600 grid cells. NOAA NCEI produced this version, last updated in September 2016.
Use Cases
- Analyze temporal trends in the daily AOT product to study seasonal aerosol variability over specific ocean regions.
- Validate climate model outputs of aerosol forcing by comparing simulated AOT with the monthly gridded satellite observations.
- Correlate AOT values from cloud-free daytime retrievals with other atmospheric variables like wind speed or sea surface temperature.
- Map the spatial distribution of aerosols over global oceans using the 0.1-degree resolution geospatial grid data.
Strengths
- Global spatial coverage over oceans on a consistent 0.1x0.1 degree grid (1800x3600 cells).
- Provides both daily and monthly averaged products for temporal analysis.
- Retrieval algorithm is applied under specific cloud-free, non-glint conditions to reduce uncertainty.
Limitations
- Data is limited to non-glint water surfaces, excluding large areas near the solar specular reflection.
- No retrievals are performed over land, limiting the dataset's geographic scope to oceans.
- The dataset's last update was in 2016, making it temporally stale for analyzing recent trends.
Provenance
- Source
- NOAA NCEI, derived from NOAA PATMOS-x level-2B orbital radiance and cloud CDR products.
- Collection Method
- Retrieved from AVHRR satellite data for selected spatial (0.1x0.1 degree) and temporal (1 per day per satellite) resolution in cloud-free daytime conditions.
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- Last updated 2016-09-30; update frequency unknown.
- Geography
- Global ocean coverage, excluding land and glint-affected water surfaces.