Satellite & Space Missions

Biography

Biography: Yaroslav Yatskiv

Abstract

The support of the "Aerosol-UA" satellite experiment by ground-based measurements is based mainly on algorithm, equipment and experience of the sunphotometer AERONET network. Methods for the satellite data validation using AERONET network, mobile sunpotometer station, lidar soundings (Figure 1) and in situ measurements are discussed. Validation of the "Aerosol-UA" mission instruments data obtained by scanning polarimeter ScanPol and wide-angle multispectral imager-polarimeter MSIP will be performed on global and regional scales using aerosol ground-based remote sensing measurements by AERONET sunphotometers, mobile and portable sunphotometers used in the Maritime Aerosol Network (Smirnov et al. 2011). Validation of the ScanPol and MSIP space-born polarimeters data will be performed by comparison of the columnar spectral aerosol optical depth and columnar aerosol particles properties obtained from simultaneous measurements of the optical characteristics of the same air mass by both the orbital polarimeters and ground-based sunphotometer. We expect that international scientific community will also be involved in the Aerosol-UA mission support and validation. The data processing facility, physical and logical structures, are being developed for processing the ScanPol and MSIP polarimeters data. Preliminary synthetic data simulations have been performed using the GRASP algorithm for ScanPol and MSIP instruments. The simulations were designed for mimic satellite observations over the AERONET ground-based sunphotometer located in Kyiv site, Ukraine (Danylevsky et al. 2011). The preliminary results of the synthetic data test showed that we can robustly derive Aerosol-UA aerosol parameters that are in good agreement with the parameters retrieved from POLDER/PARASOL and AERONET measurements. Therefore we expect that GRASP algorithm will be a powerful tool to retrieve the columnar properties of the aerosols layer and the particles microphysical characteristics from ScanPol and MSIP measurements coincident with the ground-based sunphotometer and lidar observations.