PARASOL

The PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar) payload consists of a digital camera with a CCD detector array, wide-field telecentric optics and a rotating filter wheel enabling measurements in 9 spectral channels from blue (0.443 µm) through to near-infrared (1.020µm) and in several polarization directions. Polarization measurements are performed at 0.490µm, 0.670µm and 0.865µm. Because it acquires a sequence of images every 20 seconds, the instrument can view ground targets from different angles, +/- 51° along track and +/- 43° across track.

Three-month (September through November) global fine-mode AOD at 550 nm. Bottom right : average over 5 years (2005–09) and anomalies for each individual year. Blue color indicates AOD lower than the average whereas red indicates higher values (Tanré et al., 2011)