Here are several SODA products which contain a lot of parameters, which one should I use ?
We have focalised our efforts of validation on the 5 km aerosol product at 532 nm, and we encourage users to use the parameter « Optical_Depth_532_Aerosol » contained in the « SODA_AOD-5km product ».
There are several satellite products (MODIS, POLDER, MISR, etc) which are providing the optical depth of aerosols over the ocean. Why should I use SODA ?
At the moment, the main advantages of using SODA with respect to most remote sensing products are :
- it contains no assumptions on aerosol microphysical properties,
- it is available day and night,
- it is available above the sun glint,
- the error sources are totally different than what can be provided using spaceborne passive remote sensing techniques.
The aerosol optical depth is already derived from CALIOP. What is the information brought by SODA ?
The SODA retrieval is independent of any a priori assumption on aerosol type. The retrieval is also performed at the native horizontal resolution of the lidar which may be useful for studies focused on small scale processes.