PNNL

Abstract

Thin-cirrus clouds (optical depth ~ 0.2. However in some cases, especially at low latitudes, cirrus can be mistaken for some combinations of dust and large non-absorbing spherical aerosols, raising a caution about retrievals in dusty marine regions when cirrus is present. Comparisons of MISR with lidar and AERONET show good agreement in a majority of the cases, but situations where cirrus have optical depths above 0.15 and are horizontally inhomogeneous on spatial scales shorter than ~50 km pose difficulties for cirrus retrieval using the MISR aerosol algorithm.