Aerosol optical thickness and scattering phase function retrieval from solar radiances recorded over water: a revised approach

The possibility of deriving aerosol optical thickness and phase function values for certain scattering angles from solar radiances recorded over the oceans is examined. Radiative transfer simulations results for the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) instruments are presented. These results indicate that an iterative procedure should be used for the simultaneous determination of the two quantities.