Correcting the NOAA/NASA Pathfinder AVHRR Land data set for stratospheric aerosols

The NOAA/NASA Pathfinder AVHRR Land data set is being produced by using the complete afternoon Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometers (AVHRR) Global Area Coverage (GAC) archive. With satellite intercalibration and atmospheric corrections, the AVHRR Land Pathfinder has developed an operational processing that generates a global, long term data set of 8 km Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and associated reflectances, brightness temperatures, solar and scan geometry, and cloud estimation. Since this derived NDVI is also affected seriously by stratospheric aerosols contents, particularly after the eruption of Mont Pinatubo in the Philippines in June 1991, it is important to make stratospheric aerosol corrections for Pathfinder AVHRR Land data sets which have already been corrected for Rayleigh scattering and ozone absorption. This paper presents the detailed correction algorithms of an operational stratospheric aerosol correction scheme used for Pathfinder AVHRR Land data sets, and discusses some test results