NASA Earthdata FastMAPOL Aerosol and Ocean Color Near Real-Time Products

The FastMAPOL algorithm produces near real-time aerosol and ocean color products using the best available combination of ancillary data from meteorological and ozone sources. These simultaneous retrievals jointly solve for aerosol and ocean parameters using a coupled atmosphere-ocean vector radiative-transfer model accelerated by deep neural networks. The suite includes aerosol optical thickness, single scattering albedo, layer height, effective radius, and ocean surface wind speed.

Use Cases

• Analyze aerosol transport over oceans using multi-angle reflectance data
• Validate atmospheric correction models for coastal water studies
• Cross-calibrate satellite ocean color products with in-situ measurements

Strengths

• Simultaneous aerosol and ocean parameter retrieval improves accuracy
• Near real-time availability enables timely environmental monitoring
• Deep learning acceleration allows operational processing speeds

Limitations

• Algorithm performance may be suboptimal when ancillary data is less than ideal
• Near real-time products represent a snapshot within a single orbit period

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata platform

Collection Method

Fast Multi-Angle Polarimetric Ocean and Land algorithm applied to satellite sensor data

Time Range

Near real-time

Freshness

Updated with each new satellite overpass

Geography

Global oceanic and coastal regions