MISR Aerosol Climatology Product V001

MISR Aerosol Climatology Product is 1) the microphysical and scattering characteristics of pure aerosol upon which routine retrievals are based; 2) mixtures of pure aerosol to be compared with MISR observations; and 3) likelihood value assigned to each mode geographically.The ACP describes mixtures of up to three component aerosol types from a list of eight components, in varying proportions. ACP component aerosol particle data quality depends on the ACP input data, which are based on aerosol particles described in the literature, and take into account MISR-specific sensitivity to particle size, single-scattering albedo, and shape - roughly: small, medium and large; dirty and clean; spherical and nonspherical [Kahn et al., 1998; 2001]. Also reported in the ACP are the mixtures of these components used by the retrieval algorithm.The MISR instrument consists of nine pushbroom cameras which measure radiance in four spectral bands. Global coverage is achieved in nine days. The cameras are arranged with one camera pointing toward the nadir, four cameras pointing forward and four cameras pointing aftward. It takes 7 minutes for all nine cameras to view the same surface location. The view angles relative to the surface reference ellipsoid, are 0, 26.1, 45.6, 60.0, and 70.5 degrees. The spectral band shapes are nominally Gaussian, centered at 443, 555, 670, and 865 nm.