scholarly journals Validation and Comparison of MODIS C6.1 and C6 Aerosol Products over Beijing, China

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinpeng Tian ◽  
Qiang Liu ◽  
Xiuhong Li ◽  
Jing Wei

The operational Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Aerosol Products (APs) have provided long-term and wide-spatial-coverage aerosol optical properties across the globe, such as aerosol optical depth (AOD). However, the performance of the latest Collection 6.1 (C6.1) of MODIS APs is still unclear over urban areas that feature complex surface characteristics and aerosol models. The aim of this study was to validate and compare the performance of the MODIS C6.1 and C6 APs (MxD04, x = O for Terra, x = Y for Aqua) over Beijing, China. The results of the Dark Target (DT) and Deep Blue (DB) algorithms were validated against Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) ground-based observations at local sites. The retrieval uncertainties and accuracies were evaluated using the expected error (EE: ±0.05 + 15%) and the root-mean-square error (RMSE). It was found that the MODIS C6.1 DT products performed better than the C6 DT products, with a greater percentage (by about 13%–14%) of the retrievals falling within the EE. However, the DT retrievals collected from two collections were significantly overestimated in the Beijing region, with more than 64% and 48% of the samples falling above the EE for the Terra and Aqua satellites, respectively. The MODIS C6.1 DB products performed similarly to the C6 DB products, with 70%–73% of the retrievals matching within the EE and estimation uncertainties. Moreover, the DB algorithm performed much better than DT algorithm over urban areas, especially in winter where abundant missing pixels were found in DT products. To investigate the effects of factors on AOD retrievals, the variability in the assumed surface reflectance and the main optical properties applied in DT and DB algorithms are also analyzed.

Atmosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinpeng Tian ◽  
Zhiqiang Gao

The aim of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aerosol optical depth (AOD) products over heavy aerosol loading areas. For this analysis, the Terra-MODIS Collection 6.1 (C6.1) Dark Target (DT), Deep Blue (DB) and the combined DT/DB AOD products for the years 2000–2016 are used. These products are validated using AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) data from twenty-three ground sites situated in high aerosol loading areas and with available measurements at least 500 days. The results show that the numbers of collections (N) of DB and DT/DB retrievals were much higher than that of DT, which was mainly caused by unavailable retrieval of DT in bright reflecting surface and heavy pollution conditions. The percentage falling within the expected error (PWE) of the DT retrievals (45.6%) is lower than that for the DB (53.4%) and DT/DB (53.1%) retrievals. The DB retrievals have 5.3% less average overestimation, and 25.7% higher match ratio than DT/DB retrievals. It is found that the current merged aerosol algorithm will miss some cases if it is determined only on the basis of normalized difference vegetation index. As the AOD increases, the value of PWE of the three products decreases significantly; the undervaluation is suppressed, and the overestimation is aggravated. The retrieval accuracy shows distinct seasonality: the PWE is largest in autumn or winter, and smallest in summer. The most severe overestimation and underestimation occurred in the summer. Moreover, the DT, DB and DT/DB products over different land cover types still exhibit obvious deviations. In urban areas, the PWE of DB product (52.6%) is higher than for the DT/DB (46.3%) and DT (25.2%) products. The DT retrievals perform poorly over the barren or sparsely vegetated area (N = 52). However, the performance of three products is similar over vegetated area. On the whole, the DB product performs better than the DT product over the heavy aerosol loading area.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 2989-3034 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. Levy ◽  
S. Mattoo ◽  
L. A. Munchak ◽  
L. A. Remer ◽  
A. M. Sayer ◽  
...  

Abstract. The twin Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors have been flying on Terra since 2000 and Aqua since 2002, creating an extensive data set of global Earth observations. Here, we introduce the Collection 6 (C6) algorithm to retrieve aerosol optical depth (AOD) and aerosol size parameters from MODIS-observed spectral reflectance. While not a major overhaul from the previous Collection 5 (C5) version, there are enough changes that there are significant impacts to the products and their interpretation. The C6 aerosol data set will be created from three separate retrieval algorithms that operate over different surface types. These are the two "Dark Target" (DT) algorithms for retrieving (1) over ocean (dark in visible and longer wavelengths) and (2) over vegetated/dark-soiled land (dark in the visible), plus the "Deep Blue" (DB) algorithm developed originally for retrieving (3) over desert/arid land (bright in the visible). Here, we focus on DT-ocean and DT-land (#1 and #2). We have updated assumptions for central wavelengths, Rayleigh optical depths and gas (H2O, O3, CO2, etc.) absorption corrections, while relaxing the solar zenith angle limit (up to ≤ 84°) to increase poleward coverage. For DT-land, we have updated the cloud mask to allow heavy smoke retrievals, fine-tuned the assignments for aerosol type as function of season/location, corrected bugs in the Quality Assurance (QA) logic, and added diagnostic parameters such topographic altitude. For DT-ocean, improvements include a revised cloud mask for thin-cirrus detection, inclusion of wind speed dependence on the surface reflectance, updates to logic of QA Confidence flag (QAC) assignment, and additions of important diagnostic information. At the same time, we quantified how "upstream" changes to instrument calibration, land/sea masking and cloud masking will also impact the statistics of global AOD, and affect Terra and Aqua differently. For Aqua, all changes will result in reduced global AOD (by 0.02) over ocean and increased AOD (by 0.02) over land, along with changes in spatial coverage. We compared preliminary data to surface-based sun photometer data, and show that C6 should improve upon C5. C6 will include a merged DT/DB product over semi-arid land surfaces for reduced-gap coverage and better visualization, and new information about clouds in the aerosol field. Responding to the needs of the air quality community, in addition to the standard 10 km product, C6 will include a global (DT-land and DT-ocean) aerosol product at 3 km resolution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Bilal ◽  
Majid Nazeer ◽  
Janet Nichol ◽  
Zhongfeng Qiu ◽  
Lunche Wang ◽  
...  

In this study, Terra-MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Collections 6 and 6.1 (C6 & C6.1) aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrievals with the recommended high-quality flag (QF = 3) were retrieved from Dark-Target (DT), Deep-Blue (DB) and merged DT and DB (DTB) level–2 AOD products for verification against Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) Version 3 Level 2.0 AOD data obtained from 2004–2014 for three sites located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region. These are: Beijing, located over mixed bright urban surfaces, XiangHe located over suburban surfaces, and Xinglong located over hilly and vegetated surfaces. The AOD retrievals were also validated over different land-cover types defined by static monthly NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) values obtained from the Terra-MODIS level-3 product (MOD13A3). These include non-vegetated surfaces (NVS, NDVI < 0.2), partially vegetated surfaces (PVS, 0.2 ≤ NDVI ≤ 0.3), moderately vegetated surfaces (MVS, 0.3 < NDVI < 0.5) and densely vegetated surfaces (DVS, NDVI ≥ 0.5). Results show that the DT, DB, and DTB-collocated retrievals achieve a high correlation coefficient of ~ 0.90–0.97, 0.89–0.95, and 0.86–0.95, respectively, with AERONET AOD. The DT C6 and C6.1 collocated retrievals were comparable at XiangHe and Xinglong, whereas at Beijing, the percentage of collocated retrievals within the expected error (↔EE) increased from 21.4% to 35.5%, the root mean square error (RMSE) decreased from 0.37 to 0.24, and the relative percent mean error (RPME) decreased from 49% to 27%. These results suggest significant relative improvement in the DT C6.1 product. The percentage of DB-collocated AOD retrievals ↔EE was greater than 70% at Beijing and Xinglong, whereas less than 66% was observed at XiangHe. Similar to DT AOD, DTB AOD retrievals performed well at XiangHe and Xinglong compared with Beijing. Regionally, DB C6 and C6.1-collocated retrievals performed better than DT and DTB in terms of good quality retrievals and relatively small errors. For diverse vegetated surfaces, DT-collocated retrievals reported small errors and good quality retrievals only for NVS and DVS, whereas larger errors were reported for PVS. MVS. DB contains good quality AOD retrievals over PVS, MVS, and DVS compared with NVS. DTB C6.1 collocated retrievals were better than C6 over NVS, PVS, and DVS. C6.1 is substantially improved overall, compared with C6 at local and regional scales, and over diverse vegetated surfaces.


Author(s):  
Q. Q. Xu ◽  
X. L. Chen ◽  
J. Li ◽  
J. D. Dong ◽  
T. H. Li

Abstract. The Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) onboard Himawari-8, a next-generation geostationary meteorological satellite, provided firstly the full-disk aerosol observations every 10 min at sub-kilometer spatial resolution(5 km). This is responsible for retrieving the ground-level particulate matter of fewer than 2.5 micrometers and improving assimilation model. However, the representativeness of AHI L3 hourly Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) products remains unclear under different air quality conditions, Especially, over frequently polluted urban areas that feature complex surface characteristics and aerosol models. In this study, One-to-one comprehensive comparisons were conducted to evaluate the performance of three types of AHI L3 AOT products (version 3.0) based on the Aerosol Robotic NETwork (AERONET) aerosol measurements over Beijing. The overall comparisons of AHI and ground AOTs show the AHI merged AOT perform best, which the R is 0.87, RMSE is 0.25 and 52.5% of retrievals fall within the envelope of Expect Error (EE, ±(0.05 + 0.2 * AOTground)). For the different primary pollutants, the results suggested the three types AHI hourly AOT products are more suitable for the fine particulate matters (PM2.5) retrievals, especially the merged AOT with 0.87 of R, 0.29 of RMSE and 58.8% of within EE. Furthermore, when the slight and moderate pollution happened over Beijing, the AHI hourly AOT products perform well. And when the heavy pollution happened, the performance of the AHI merge AOT and L2 mean AOT is better. a case during low to high pollution suggested that AHI merged AOT can capture the similar spatial pattern to the MODIS (Deep Blue) DB or (Dark Target) DTDB merged AOT and has good consistency with ground-based air quality monitoring. These results demonstrate the AHI hourly merged AOT is a promising aerosol retrieval for air quality.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 12411-12440 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Russell ◽  
A. E. Perring ◽  
L. C. Valin ◽  
E. Bucsela ◽  
E. C. Browne ◽  
...  

Abstract. We present a new retrieval of tropospheric NO2 vertical column density from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) based on high spatial and temporal resolution terrain and profile inputs. We find non-negligible impacts on the retrieved NO2 column for terrain pressure (±20%), albedo (±40%), and NO2 vertical profile (−75%–+10%). We compare our NO2 product, the Berkeley High-Resolution (BEHR) product, with operational retrievals and find that the operational retrievals are biased high (30%) over remote areas and biased low (8%) over urban regions. We validate the operational and BEHR products using boundary layer aircraft observations from the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS-CA) field campaign which occurred in June 2008 in California. Results indicate that columns derived using our boundary layer extrapolation method show good agreement with satellite observations (R2 = 0.65–0.83; N = 68) and provide a more robust validation of satellite-observed NO2 column than those determined using full vertical spirals (R2 = 0.26; N = 5) as in previous work. Agreement between aircraft observations and the BEHR product (R2 = 0.83) is better than agreement with the operational products (R2 = 0.65–0.72). We also show that agreement between satellite and aircraft observations for all products can be further improved (e.g. BEHR: R2 = 0.91) using cloud information from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument instead of the OMI cloud product. These results indicate that much of the variance in the operational products can be attributed to coarse resolution terrain and profile parameters.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1683-1716 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. A. Munchak ◽  
R. C. Levy ◽  
S. Mattoo ◽  
L. A. Remer ◽  
B. N. Holben ◽  
...  

Abstract. MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites have provided a rich dataset of aerosol information at a 10 km spatial scale. Although originally intended for climate applications, the air quality community quickly became interested in using the MODIS aerosol data. However, 10 km resolution is not sufficient to resolve local scale aerosol features. With this in mind, MODIS Collection 6 is including a global aerosol product with a 3 km resolution. Here, we evaluate the 3 km product over the Baltimore/Washington D.C., USA, corridor during the summer of 2011, by comparing with spatially dense data collected as part of the DISCOVER-AQ campaign; these data were measured by the NASA Langley Research Center airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) and a network of 44 sun photometers (SP) spaced approximately 10 km apart. The HSRL instrument shows that AOD can vary by up to 0.2 within a single 10 km MODIS pixel, meaning that higher resolution satellite retrievals may help to characterize aerosol spatial distributions in this region. Different techniques for validating a high-resolution aerosol product against SP measurements are considered. Although the 10 km product is more statistically reliable than the 3 km product, the 3 km product still performs acceptably, with more than two-thirds of MODIS/SP collocations falling within the expected error envelope with high correlation (R > 0.90). The 3 km product can better resolve aerosol gradients and retrieve closer to clouds and shorelines than the 10 km product, but tends to show more significant noise especially in urban areas. This urban degradation is quantified using ancillary land cover data. Overall, we show that the MODIS 3 km product adds new information to the existing set of satellite derived aerosol products and validates well over the region, but due to noise and problems in urban areas, should be treated with some degree of caution.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. M. Kandirmaz ◽  
K. Kaba

Some studies have shown that the estimation of global sunshine duration can be done with the help of geostationary satellites because they can record several images of the same location in a day. In this paper, images obtained from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensors of polar orbiting satellites Aqua and Terra were used to estimate daily global sunshine duration for any region in Turkey. A new quadratic correlation between daily mean cloud cover index and relative sunshine duration was also introduced and compared with the linear correlation. Results have shown that polar orbiting satellites can be used for the estimation of sunshine duration. The quadratic model introduced here works better than the linear model especially for the winter months in which very low sunshine duration values were recorded at the ground stations for many days.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 8543-8554 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Russell ◽  
A. E. Perring ◽  
L. C. Valin ◽  
E. J. Bucsela ◽  
E. C. Browne ◽  
...  

Abstract. We present a new retrieval of tropospheric NO2 vertical column density from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) based on high spatial and temporal resolution terrain and profile inputs. We compare our NO2 product, the Berkeley High-Resolution (BEHR) product, with operational retrievals and find that the operational retrievals are biased high (30 %) over remote areas and biased low (8 %) over urban regions. Additionally, we find non-negligible impacts on the retrieved NO2 column for terrain pressure (±20 %), albedo (±40 %), and NO2 vertical profile (−75 %–+10 %). We validate the operational and BEHR products using boundary layer aircraft observations from the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS-CA) field campaign which occurred in June 2008 in California. Results indicate that columns derived using our boundary layer extrapolation method show good agreement with satellite observations (R2 = 0.65–0.83; N = 68) and provide a more robust validation of satellite-observed NO2 column than those determined using full vertical spirals (R2 = 0.26; N = 5) as in previous work. Agreement between aircraft observations and the BEHR product (R2 = 0.83) is better than agreement with the operational products (R2 = 0.65–0.72). We also show that agreement between satellite and aircraft observations can be further improved (e.g. BEHR: R2 = 0.91) using cloud information from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument instead of the OMI cloud product. These results indicate that much of the variance in the operational products can be attributed to coarse resolution terrain pressure, albedo, and profile parameters implemented in the retrievals.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 4096 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Meyer ◽  
Steven Platnick ◽  
Robert Holz ◽  
Steve Dutcher ◽  
Greg Quinn ◽  
...  

Climate studies, including trend detection and other time series analyses, necessarily require stable, well-characterized and long-term data records. For satellite-based geophysical retrieval datasets, such data records often involve merging the observational records of multiple similar, though not identical, instruments. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) cloud mask (CLDMSK) and cloud-top and optical properties (CLDPROP) products are designed to bridge the observational records of the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the joint NASA/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite and NOAA’s new generation of operational polar-orbiting weather platforms (NOAA-20+). Early implementations of the CLDPROP algorithms on Aqua MODIS and SNPP VIIRS suffered from large intersensor biases in cloud optical properties that were traced back to relative radiometric inconsistency in analogous shortwave channels on both imagers, with VIIRS generally observing brighter top-of-atmosphere spectral reflectance than MODIS (e.g., up to 5% brighter in the 0.67 µm channel). Radiometric adjustment factors for the SNPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS shortwave channels used in the cloud optical property retrievals are derived from an extensive analysis of the overlapping observational records with Aqua MODIS, specifically for homogenous maritime liquid water cloud scenes for which the viewing/solar geometry of MODIS and VIIRS match. Application of these adjustment factors to the VIIRS L1B prior to ingestion into the CLDMSK and CLDPROP algorithms yields improved intersensor agreement, particularly for cloud optical properties.


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