AERONET—A Federated Instrument Network and Data Archive for Aerosol Characterization下载

T he concept and description of a remote sensing aerosol monitoring network initiated by NASA, developed to sup- port NASA, CNES, and NASDA’s Earth satellite systems under the name AERONET and expanded by national and international collaboration, is described. Recent de- velopment of weather-resistant automatic sun and sky scanning spectral radiometers enable frequent measure- ments of atmospheric aerosol optical properties and pre- cipitable water at remote sites. Transmission of automatic measurements via the geostationary satellites GOES and METEOSATS’ Data Collection Systems allows reception and processing in near real-time from approximately 75% of the Earth’s surface and with the expected addition of GMS, the coverage will increase to 90% in 1998. NASA developed a UNIX-based near real-time processing, display and analysis system providing internet access to the emerg- ing global database. Information on the system is avail- able on the project homepage, http://spamer.gsfc.nasa.gov. The philosophy of an open access database, centralized processing and a user-friendly graphical interface has contributed to the growth of international cooperation for ground-based aerosol monitoring and imposes a stan- dardization for these measurements. The system’s auto- matic data acquisition, transmission, and processing fa- cilitates aerosol characterization on local, regional, and global scales with applications to transport and radiation budget studies, radiative transfer-modeling and valida- tion of satellite aerosol retrievals. This article discusses the operation and philosophy of the monitoring system, the precision and accuracy of the measuring radiometers, a brief description of the processing system, and access to the database. Elsevier Science Inc., 1998