Abstract
The 3 km Dark Target (DT) aerosol optical depth (AOD) products, 10 km DT and Deep Blue (DB) AOD products from the Collection 6 (C6) product data of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) are compared with Sun-sky Radiometer Network (SONET) measurements at Song Mountain in central China, where ground-based remote sensing measurements of aerosol properties are still very limited. The seasonal variations of AODs are significant in the Song Mountain region, with higher AODs in spring and summer and lower AODs in autumn and winter. Annual mean AODs (0.55 µm) vary in the range of 0.5–0.7, which indicates particle matter (PM) pollutions in this mountain region. Validation against one-year ground-based measurements shows that AOD retrievals from the MODIS onboard Aqua satellite are better than those from the Terra satellite in Song Mountain. The 3 km and 10 km AODs from DT algorithms are comparable over this region, while the AOD accuracy of DB algorithm is relatively lower. However, the spatial coverage of DB products is higher than that of 10 km DT products. Moreover, the optical and microphysical characteristics of aerosols at Song Mountain are analyzed on the basis of SONET observations. It suggests that coarse-mode aerosol particles dominate in spring, and fine-mode particles dominate in summer. The aerosol property models are also established and compared to aerosol types used by MODIS algorithm.
Highlights
Aerosol in the atmosphere plays an important role in the climate system of the Earth
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on Terra is in large degradation in the shortwave band, which causes the negative trend of multiple MODIS C5 products (for example, ́0.05/decade of Terra aerosol optical depth (AOD) product over land in recent years) [3]
The global validation of Collection 6 (C6) data has been performed by comparing MODIS retrieved AODs to the observations from Aerosol Robotic
Summary
Aerosol in the atmosphere plays an important role in the climate system of the Earth. The new calibration of C6 removes the major calibration bias in the Level 1B data, especially in band B3 (0.47 μm), which is important for the aerosol retrievals over land Another important update is the aerosol global products with the spatial resolution of 3 km. POLarization and Directionality of Earth Reflectance (POLDER) [20] Most of these aerosol product validations are conducted at several major cities or eastern China [15,16,17,18]. In central China, especially in the mountainous region, the validation of MODIS aerosol product is very rare. We used Sun-sky Radiometer Network (SONET) Songshan measurements as validations of MODIS aerosol products over this region. We analyzed aerosol characteristics and established aerosol models for this region, which can be used in local climate studies, air quality assessment, atmospheric correction of satellite images, the in-flight calibration of satellites, and so on
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