Comparison of Three Years of Terra and Aqua MODIS Aerosol Optical Thickness Over the Global Oceans

Far from land-based sources, long-term statistics of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) over the oceans is expected to have a negligible diurnal signal. Therefore, comparing large-scale regional and global mean AOT derived independently from Terra and Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer data will provide a measure of the precision of the overall product. Three years of overlapping records of quality and pixel-weighted level-3 statistics were analyzed. These data show that the instruments' measurement of the long-term global annual mean agree to within 1% or 0.0014-in optical thickness with an rms difference of 0.004, which is calculated from global monthly means. Two-thirds of the regions have long-term annual regional means that agree to within 2.5%. The highest regional difference is 5%, which is found over the southern circumpolar ocean. Other aerosol parameters such as particle size will show larger differences. Datasets that are not quality and pixel weighted may also show larger differences