Comparative analysis of MISR MODIS, and AERONET AOD products performed over seven AERONET stations located in the Middle East and North Africa for the period of 2000–2015. Sites are categorized into dust, biomass burning and mixed. MISR and MODIS AODs agree during high dust seasons but MODIS tends to underestimate AODs during low dust seasons. Over dust dominating sites, MODIS/Terra AOD indicate a negative trend over the time series, while MODIS/Aqua, MISR, and AERONET depict a positive trend. A deviation between MODIS/Aqua and MODIS/Terra was observed regardless of the geographic location and data sampling. The performance of MODIS is similar over all region with ~ 68 % of AODs within the Δτ = ±0.05 ± 0.15τ AERO confidence range. MISR AOD retrievals fall within 72 % of the same confidence range for all sites examined here. Both MISR and MODIS capture aerosol climatology; however few cases were observed where one of the two sensors better captures the climatology over a certain location or AOD range than the other sensor.