AERONET-MAN
NASA's SeaBASS validation system obtains data from the
AERONET Maritime Aerosol Network (AERONET-MAN) for use in satellite sensor
validation match-up analyses. As described by
Smirnov et al. (2009), AERONET MAN consists of aerosol optical depth (AOD or AOT) measurements from sun photometers mounted on ships. Please refer to the rest of the information in this article for details on how to acknowledge the use of AERONET-MAN data and how the OBPG processes these data.
AERONET-MAN Data Usage Policy
SeaBASS has incorporated AERONET-MAN results into a special subset of validation results. Please note that in addition to the
SeaBASS data access policies, users should abide by AERONET-MAN's data usage policy, which at the time of writing was:
The public domain data you are about to download are contributed by the Maritime Aerosol Network (MAN),
a component of the International AERONET Federation. Each cruise has Principal Investigators (PIs)
responsible for instrument deployment, maintenance and data collection. The PIs have priority use of the
data collected during the ship cruise. The PIs are entitled to be notified when using their cruise data.
PIs contact information are available on data charts and in downloaded data files for each cruise.
How to determine AERONET-MAN cruises from SeaBASS data files
A full list of AERONET-MAN's cruise names are summarized on the
official site and the full list of specific cruise names corresponds to the downloaded individual data file names.
To organize the data within SeaBASS's relational database management system, SeaBASS added the prefix "aman_aod_" to each original cruise names. Remove that prefix to reconstruct the original MAN cruise name. For example, the following are equivalent:
Cruise name in SeaBASS:
aman_aod_Marion_Dufresne_09_1
Cruise name from original AERONET-MAN files:
Marion_Dufresne_09_1
What version of AERONET-MAN data were used in SeaBASS validation?
AERONET-MAN quality level 2.0 (i.e., the highest available) AOD data were used to construct SeaBASS validation results, using all data available when last downloaded from the AERONET-MAN website 2017-05-30
Validation Data Processing Description
The in situ data products used for AERONET-MAN validation were AOT(lambda) and angstrom:
- AOT(lambda) measurements were obtained directly from AERONET-MAN level 2.0 AOD data files
- angstrom was made by identifying that AOT at 440 nm was within 10 nm of 443 nm and that AOT at 870 nm was within 10 nm of 865 nm. If so, angstrom was calculated using the equation:
- angstrom exponent = -ln(aot870/aot440)/ln(870/440)
References
Bailey, S.W. and Werdell, P.J. (2006). A multi-sensor approach for the on-orbit validation of ocean color satellite data products. Rem. Sens. Environ. 102, 12-23.
Smirnov, A., B. N. Holben, I. Slutsker, D. M. Giles, C. R. McClain, T. F. Eck, S. M. Sakerin, A. Macke, P. Croot, G. Zibordi, P. K. Quinn, J. Sciare, S. Kinne, M. Harvey, T. J. Smyth, S. Piketh, T. Zielinski, A. Proshutinsky, J. I. Goes, N. B. Nelson, P. Larouche, V. F. Radionov, P. Goloub, K. Krishna Moorthy, R. Matarrese, E. J. Robertson, and F. Jourdin (2009), Maritime Aerosol Network as a component of Aerosol Robotic Network, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D06204, doi:10.1029/2008JD011257.