Remote Sensing of Spectral Aerosol Properties: A Classroom Experience

Abstract

Bridging the gap between current research and the classroom is a major challenge to today's instructor, especially in the sciences where progress happens quickly. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland teamed up to design a graduate class project intended to provide a handson introduction to the physical basis for the retrieval of aerosol properties from state-of-the-art Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations. Students learned to recognize spectral signatures of atmospheric aerosols and perform spectral inversions. They became acquainted with the operational MODIS aerosol retrieval algorithm over oceans and methods for its evaluation, including comparisons with ground-based Aerosol Robotic Network sun-photometer data.