Aerosol characterization of Morocco with AERONET and intercomparison with satellite data: TOMS, MODIS and MISR.

The aim of this paper is to characterize the aerosol loadings, their optical and microphysical properties over Morocco, by use of the AERONET network and satellite data. Three AERONET stations in Morocco; Saada, Ras_E1_Ain and Dakhla are considered in this work. The aerosol parameters studied are the aerosol optical thickness, the Angstrom parameter, the size distribution, the single scattering albedo and the refraction index. An inter-comparison with satellite data has been achieved. The most popular satellite products, TOMS (Earth Probe and OMI), MODIS and MISR have been considered. It comes out from this study that the mean aerosol optical thickness (550 nm) vary from 0.22 to 0.3, with a peak in summer time of 0.56 for Dakhla, 0.42 for Ras_E1_Ain and 0.35 for Saada. The Angstrom parameter mean is 0.6 for Dakhla and 0.75 for Saada and Ras_E1_Ain with a summer minimum of 0.32 for Dakhla and 0.55 for Saada and Ras_E1_Ain. The size distribution is bimodal with a predominance of the coarse mode except for Saada in winter and autumn. This region depicts desert dust predominant environment with a single scattering albedo varying from 0.72 to 0.96. Saada and Ras_E1_Ain being at 52 km apart, their coincident daily AOT correlate with a correlation coefficient; R=0.93. Concerning the correlation between satellite data and AERONET AOT, TOMS EP has a correlation coefficient of 0.53 for Saada (all data), 0.68 for Dakhla (all data). TOMS OMI correlation coefficient is 0.68 for Saada (all data) and 0.71 for Ras_E1_Ain (year 2006). MISR (level 3 data) correlation coefficient is 0.77 for Saada (all data) and 0.85 for Dakhla (all data). MODIS (level 3) correlation coefficient is 0.86 for Saada (all data) and 0.92 for Dakhla (all data). Level 2 MODIS correlation coefficient is 0.69 for Saada (year 2006), 0.86 for Ras_E1_Ain (year 2006) and 0.97 for Dakhla (year 2003).