Abstract:Directional polarimetric camera (DPC) can acquire multi-spectral, multi-angle, radiometric and polarimetric reflectance data from the earth. A method for the inversion of aerosol optical depth was presented according to the multi-spectral, multi-angle and polarimetric data. Firstly, the polarized land surface reflectance is calculated using the Nadal-Breon semi-empirical model to deduct the land surface radiation from the measured value. Secondly, the vector radiation transfer model derived from double-accumulation method is used to construct the lookup table of aerosol optical parameters. Then, the minimum residual is calculated to determine the aerosol model dynamically for the retrieving of aerosol optical thickness over the land. Using the L1 products of DPC, the aerosol optical thickness in eastern China is retrieved. The values are compared with the product of MODIS and the data measured at the same time from AERONET ground station displaced at several places. Results show that the distribution of aerosol optical thickness retrieved from DPC data is in good agreement with MODIS aerosol product. And also, the results of DPC and AERONET ground station are highly correlated. The correlation coefficients of 670 nm and 865nm bands are above 0.8. It demonstrates the feasibility of the algorithm and what we have considered over land.