Background Optical Depth Correction over Urban Areas to Improve Land Aerosol Retrieval from Himawari-8

Abstract

A conventional clear-sky minimum reflectance method, which has been widely used for AOD retrieval from geostationary satellites, usually has less accuracy over urban than other land areas. Urban areas usually have more complex surface properties and various aerosol types from different emission sources. When the surface reflectance is calculated from the clear-sky minimum reflectance, background aerosol optical depth (BOD) is assumed to be closed to zero. This assumption generates larger surface reflectance which leads to underestimation of AOD retrieved. This study proposed a correction for BOD value to be applied for AOD retrieval primary over urban areas where the pollution or natural source aerosol is persistent for long term. The study area covers Indonesia’s land region, while for evaluating the impact of specific treatment over urban areas we used the AERONET data from Bandung, Pontianak, and Makassar sites. The comparison of AOD retrieved from modified BOD and the AERONET ground-based data showed that the corrected surface reflectance improved the accuracy of AOD in the three sites, with a correlation coefficient increased from 0.23 to 0.37 and the fraction of ‘good retrieval’ changed from 35% to 51%.