The wide field of view imaging spectroradiometer Polarization and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectance (POLDER) developed by Center National d'Etudes Spatiales and operated aboard the Japanese heliosynchronous platform Advanced Earth Observation Satellite (ADEOS) from October 30, 1996, to June 30, 1997, provided the first global systematic measurements of the spectral, directional, and polarized characteristics of the solar radiation reflected by the Earth/atmosphere system. These original observational capabilities offer an opportunity to enhance the characterization of several components of the global environment, especially the oceanic and terrestrial vegetal primary production, the aerosol physical and optical properties, and the tridimensional structure and microphysics of clouds. Here we examine the remote sensing of aerosols over the oceans. In a first step the aerosol optical thickness and ¿ngstr¿m exponent are derived from the radiance measurements. In a second step the polarization measurements are used for the retrieval of the aerosol refractive index. The inversion algorithm assumes spherical, nonabsorbing particles with monomodal lognormal size distribution. The adequacy of this modeling is discussed for a representative set of aerosol observations. Successful retrieval is generally achieved in the presence of small aerosols with ¿ngstr¿m exponent larger than ~1.0. For such particles, polarization may provide information on the particle refractive index. As the ¿ngstr¿m exponent of the particle decreases, the data fitting residual errors increase, especially in polarized light, which prevents the retrieval of the aerosol refractive index. The trends of the discrepancies point out two shortcomings of the aerosol modeling. The theoretical results systematically underestimate the contribution of small polarizing particles in the polarization measurements for side-scattering angles ranging from 80¿ to 120¿. This indicates very probably that aerosol models have to follow bimodal size distribution. On the other hand, the systematic trend of the directional behavior of the upward radiance and the lack of significant rainbow effect in the measurements result probably from nonsphericity of some large aerosols. Confirmation of these points requires improved analysis of the POLDER data. ¿ 2000 American Geophysical Union