Retrieving Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) over the desert of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) using MSG/SEVIRI infrared measurements

In this paper, an empirical model is proposed to retrieve the Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) and Water Vapor from the thermal bands differences over desert area. The model was developed using database ground measurements constructed from the AERONET measurements and MSG/SEVIRI satellites collected over some locations in the desert of the United Arab of Emirates (UAE) between 2004 to 2010. An independent dataset is used for the validation of the proposed model. The fair results were obtained for the retrieval of both the Aerosol optical thickness and water vapor.