Principal Investigator (PI): Omar Torres, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

We propose the production of a global record of aerosol properties over land derived from 33 years of near-UV observations by five sensors. The derived products include the UV aerosol Index, aerosol extinction optical depth, and aerosol absorption optical depth. The combined 33-year record of aerosol information derived from NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) family of sensors (Nimbus-7, 1979-1992; Meteor-3, 1992-1994; Earth-Probe, 1996-2005) constitutes the only global dataset on aerosol properties over-land before the deployment of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) sensors on NASA's Terra satellite. The 1978-2005 TOMS record of aerosol index and aerosol optical depth provided the first global depiction of the global aerosol load.

With the launch of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) instrument in 2004, the near UV record continues to be extended to the present and the foreseeable future using a mature retrieval algorithm. The proposed dataset will provide a useful set of observations covering a period when no other datasets over land are available. In addition to the above-described products, we will also generate an aerosol index simulator that will facilitate the comparison of transport model results to satellite observations.

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