I'm working on AOD retrieval from satellite data, and I'm looking for how to retrieve the AOD from a Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) using open source RTM and what software that can be used to run the code.
Article Simplified and Fast Atmospheric Radiative Transfer model for...
AOD is obtained from many satellite sensors (MODIS, MISR, VIIRS, SeaWifs, OMI, Himawari, ...) on an operational basis by NASA, etc., so you don't need to do that yourself. Their retrieval procedure is extremely complex, so it's great they do that for you. You just have to go to their websites and download the data...
You might want to do that operation yourself only if you want to develop your own alternative method (good luck with that!) or if you want to do that for a sensor that was not meant to provide AOD data, and thus for which no operational method exists.
As mentioned by Chris, the information you are looking for is already available from different satellite sensors. If you want to know how exactly the AOD values have been calculated in these projects, you may refer to their fact sheets.
However, in general, for cloudless conditions, you can drive the extinction due to the aerosol suspension (and thus AOD) through subtracting the TOA radiance (at a given wavelength) measured by the satellite by the simulated clearsky TOA radiance (at the same wavelength) simulated by the RTM. In case of the cloudy conditions, you will need to take out the effect of the cloud as well.
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