ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-6-673-2006 Validation of SCIAMACHY top-of-atmosphere reflectance for aerosol remote sensing using MERIS L1 data von Hoyningen-Huene W. 1 Kokhanovsky A. A. 1 Wuttke M. W. 1 Buchwitz M. 1 Noël S. 1 Gerilowski K. 1 Burrows J. P. 1 Latter B. 2 Siddans R. 2 Kerridge B. J. 2 Institute of Environmental Physics/Remote Sensing, University of Bremen, Germany Space Science and Technology Department, Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, Chilton, UK 18 01 2006 6 1 673 699 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/6/673/2006/acpd-6-673-2006.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/6/673/2006/acpd-6-673-2006.pdf

Aerosol remote sensing is very much dependent on the quite accurate knowledge of the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance retrieved by a particular instrument. The status of the calibration of such an instrument thus is reflected in the quality of the aerosol retrieval. Currently the SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY) instrument gives too low values of the TOA reflectance, compared e.g. to data from MERIS (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer), both operating on ENVISAT (ENVIronmental SATellite), but the calibration of the operational L1 product of SCIAMACHY is not yet finished. <br><br> From an inter-comparison of MERIS and SCIAMACHY TOA reflectance, for collocated scenes correction factors are derived to improve the current SCIAMACHY L1 data for the purpose of aerosol remote sensing. The corrected reflectance has been used for a first remote sensing of the aerosol optical thickness by the BAER (Bremen AErosol Retrieval) approach using SCIAMACHY data.