es COMMERCIAL AND OPERATIONAL USERS' PANEL 
The distribution of aerosols in the atmos- 
phere, as defined by the 670 and 750 nm 
bands of the CZCS, is of significant importance 
to the research of the Navy's meteorological 
community, since there is a strong naval re- 
quirement for surface horizontal atmospheric 
visibility. The Naval Environmental Prediction 
and Research Facility (NEPRF) is examining 
ways of using data on integrated aerosol distri- 
bution for naval needs. Although basic re- 
search will be required to define the specific 
application, SeaWiFS will provide improved 
data for meeting this requirement. 
The Navy also needs to establish a tempor- 
al and spatial optical property (diffuse attenua- 
tion coefficient) data base, which can be used 
to establish scales of variability and to develop 
models that predict their distribution (Esaias et 
al. 1986). These data can only be acquired 
from a satellite platform with a sensor like the 
proposed SeaWiFS. 
