Comparison of hourly aerosol retrievals from JAXA Himawari/AHI in version 3.0 and a simple customized method

Abstract

Advanced Himawari imager (AHI) carried on the new-generation geostationary meteorological Himawari-8 satellite of Japan has been generating aerosol observations with a high temporal resolution since 7 July 2015. However, the previous studies lack a comprehensive quality assessment and spatial coverage analysis of AHI hourly aerosol products (level 3 version 3.0) across the full disk scan. The monitoring accuracy of different AHI aerosol products (AODpure and AODmerged) and a simple customized product (AODmean) was evaluated against Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) and Maritime Aerosol Network (MAN) observations from May 2016 to February 2019 in this study. Results showed that AHI AODmean demonstrates a better agreement to AERONET AOD measurements than AODpure and AODmerged over land (R = 0.81, bias = − 0.011) and all the AHI land retrievals present a significant regional performance differences, while the relatively better performance is observed in AODmerged over the coastal regions (R = 0.89, bias = 0.053). Over ocean, AHI exhibited overall overestimation in retrieving AOD against MAN observations and the relatively lower uncertainties were found in AODpure retrievals (R = 0.96, bias = 0.057). The hourly comparisons in different AHI products demonstrated a robust performance in the late afternoon (16:00–17:00 LT) over land and around the noon (10:00–13:00 LT) over coast. AHI AOD products indicated an obvious underestimation when compared to MODIS AOD retrievals over both land and ocean. Furthermore, the performance differences of AHI AOD products have also affected by the vegetation cover, pollution levels and relative humidity. For spatiotemporal coverage, the results of different AHI products demonstrated that AODmean can achieve relatively higher coverage than AODpure and AODmerged, and AHI retrievals present significant regional differences in coverage capability.