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The aim of this paper is to characterize the aerosol loadings, their optical and microphysical properties over Morocco, by
use of the AERONET network and satellite data. Three AERONET stations in Morocco; Saada, Ras_El_Ain and Dakhla
are considered in this work. The aerosol parameters studied are the aerosol optical thickness, the Angstrom parameter,
the size distribution, the single scattering albedo and the refraction index. An inter-comparison with satellite data has
been achieved. The most popular satellite products, TOMS (Earth Probe and OMI), MODIS and MISR have been
considered. It comes out from this study that the mean aerosol optical thickness (550 nm) vary from 0.22 to 0.3, with a
peak in summer time of 0.56 for Dakhla, 0.42 for Ras_El_Ain and 0.35 for Saada. The Angstrom parameter mean is 0.6
for Dakhla and 0.75 for Saada and Ras_El_Ain with a summer minimum of 0.32 for Dakhla and 0.55 for Saada and
Ras_El_Ain. The size distribution is bimodal with a predominance of the coarse mode except for Saada in winter and
autumn. This region depicts desert dust predominant environment with a single scattering albedo varying from 0.72 to
0.96. Saada and Ras_El_Ain being at 52 km apart, their coincident daily AOT correlate with a correlation coefficient;
R=0.93. Concerning the correlation between satellite data and AERONET AOT, TOMS EP has a correlation coefficient
of 0.53 for Saada (all data), 0.68 for Dakhla (all data). TOMS OMI correlation coefficient is 0.68 for Saada (all data) and
0.71 for Ras_El_Ain (year 2006). MISR (level 3 data) correlation coefficient is 0.77 for Saada (all data) and 0.85 for
Dakhla (all data). MODIS (level 3) correlation coefficient is 0.86 for Saada (all data) and 0.92 for Dakhla (all data).
Level 2 MODIS correlation coefficient is 0.69 for Saada (year 2006), 0.86 for Ras_El_Ain (year 2006) and 0.97 for
Dakhla (year 2003).
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