• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.559-569
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• 2008

The Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) on board the Communication Ocean Meteorological Satellite (COMS), the first geostationary ocean color sensor, requires accurate atmospheric correction since its eight bands are also affected by atmospheric constituents such as gases, molecules and atmospheric aerosols. Unlike gases and molecules in the atmosphere, aerosols can interact with sunlight by complex scattering and absorption properties. For the purpose of qualified ocean remote sensing, understanding of aerosol-radiation interactions is needed. In this study, we show micro-physical and optical properties of aerosols using the Optical Property of Aerosol and Cloud (OPAC) aerosol models. Aerosol optical properties, then, were used to analysis the relationship between theoretical satellite measured radiation from radiative transfer calculations and aerosol optical thickness (AOT) under various environments (aerosol type and loadings). It is found that the choice of aerosol type makes little different in AOT retrieval for AOT<0.2. Otherwise AOT differences between true and retrieved increase as AOT increases. Furthermore, the differences between the AOT and angstrom exponent from standard algorithms and this study, and the comparison with ground based sunphotometer observations are investigated. Over the northeast Asian region, these comparisons suggest that spatially averaged mean AOT retrieved from this study is much better than from standard ocean color algorithm. Finally, these results will be useful for aerosol retrieval or atmospheric correction of COMS/GOCI data processing.