Verification of the consistency of POLDER aerosol index over land with ATSR-2/ERS-2 fire product

The remote sensing of aerosol over land remains a difficult task. Global di stribution of polarizing aerosols (urban, industrial, smoke particles) are obtained, over land, from POLDER/ADEOS-1 visible and near-infrared measurem ents. In the paper, we study the correlation between POLDER aerosol index r etrieved over land from polarimetric measurements and fire products derived from ATSR-2/ERS-2 3.7 mu m channel. At global scale, fire patterns and aer osol index distributions agree well. A selection of 9 continental sites: di stributed in Africa, America and Asia have been Studied. Monthly variations of aerosol index as well as fire occurence are presented. A good correlati on is observed, in tradional biomass burning regions, between aerosol index monthly average and fire count. These results clearly demonstrate POLDER c apability to monitor biomass burning aerosol and also suggests polarizing a erosol presence in countries such as India or China.