An analysis of global aerosol type as retrieved by MISR

In addition to aerosol optical depth (AOD), aerosol type is required globally for climate forcing calculations, constraining aerosol transport models and other applications. However, validating satellite aerosol-type retrievals is more challenging than testing AOD results, because aerosol type is a more complex quantity, and ground truth data are far less numerous and generally not as robust. We evaluate the Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) Version 22 aerosol-type retrievals by assessing product self-consistency on a regional basis and by making comparisons with general expectation and with the Aerosol Robotic Network aerosol-type climatology, as available. The results confirm and add detail to the observation that aerosol-type discrimination improves dramatically where midvisible AOD exceeds about 0.15 or 0.2. When the aerosol-type information content of the observations is relatively low, increased scattering-angle range improves particle-type sensitivity. The MISR standard, operational product discriminates among small, medium, and large particles and exhibits qualitative sensitivity to single-scattering albedo (SSA) under good aerosol-type retrieval conditions, providing a categorical aerosol-type classification. MISR angstrom ngstrom exponent deviates systematically from ground truth where particle types missing from the algorithm climatology are present, or where cloud contamination is likely to occur, and SSA tends to be overestimated where absorbing particles are found. We determined that the number of mixtures passing the algorithm acceptance criteria (#SuccMix) represents aerosol-type retrieval quality effectively, providing a useful aerosol-type quality flag.