Figure 1.

Flow chart of the cloud processing method for sun photometer observations by the AERONET quality assurance algorithm and subsequent categorization and analysis performed within this work. Note that these metadata flags are not available in AERONET public data products. Each number is indicative of the maximum achieved quality level and those demarked with * can be impacted due to instrument operation issues or measurement anomalies. With this, “0” and “1” are “cloudy”, “2” as “some clouds”, and “3” and “4” as “clear sky”.