The cloud screening in the MODIS dark target aerosol algorithm is a series of internal and external tests, and is different over land and ocean. The details of the cloud masking scheme is described in section A2.2 of the ATBD. The Collection 6 aerosol products contain a new SDS called “Aerosol_Cldmask_Land_Ocean” which characterizes each 500 m input pixels as “clear” or “cloudy”