scholarly journals The spatiotemporal relationship between PM<sub>2.5</sub> and aerosol optical depth in China: influencing factors and implications for satellite PM<sub>2.5</sub> estimations using MAIAC aerosol optical depth

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (24) ◽  
pp. 18375-18391
Author(s):  
Qingqing He ◽  
Mengya Wang ◽  
Steve Hung Lam Yim

Abstract. Satellite aerosol retrievals have been a popular alternative to monitoring the surface-based PM2.5 concentration due to their extensive spatial and temporal coverage. Satellite-derived PM2.5 estimations strongly rely on an accurate representation of the relationship between ground-level PM2.5 and satellite aerosol optical depth (AOD). Due to the limitations of satellite AOD data, most studies have examined the relationship at a coarse resolution (i.e., ≥ 10 km); thus, more effort is still needed to better understand the relationship between “in situ” PM2.5 and AOD at finer spatial scales. While PM2.5 and AOD could have obvious temporal variations, few studies have examined the diurnal variation in their relationship. Therefore, considerable uncertainty still exists in satellite-derived PM2.5 estimations due to these research gaps. Taking advantage of the newly released fine-spatial-resolution satellite AOD data derived from the Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) algorithm and real-time ground aerosol and PM2.5 measurements, this study explicitly explored the relationship between PM2.5 and AOD as well as its plausible impact factors, including meteorological parameters and topography, in mainland China during 2019, at various spatial and temporal scales. The coefficient of variation, the Pearson correlation coefficient and the slope of the linear regression model were used. Spatially, stronger correlations mainly occurred in northern and eastern China, and the linear slope was larger on average in northern inland regions than in other areas. Temporally, the PM2.5–AOD correlation peaked at noon and in the afternoon, and reached a maximum in winter. Simultaneously, considering relative humidity (RH) and the planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) in the relationship can improve the correlation, but the effect of RH and the PBLH on the correlation varied spatially and temporally with respect to both strength and direction. In addition, the largest correlation occurred at 400–600 m primarily in basin terrain such as the Sichuan Basin, the Shanxi–Shaanxi basins and the Junggar Basin. MAIAC 1 km AOD can better represent the ground-level fine particulate matter in most domains with exceptions, such as in very high terrain (i.e., Tibetan Plateau) and northern central China (i.e., Qinghai and Gansu). The findings of this study have useful implications for satellite-based PM2.5 monitoring and will further inform the understanding of the aerosol variation and PM2.5 pollution status of mainland China.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingqing He ◽  
Mengya Wang ◽  
Steve Hung Lam Yim

Abstract. Satellite aerosol retrievals have been a popular alternative to monitoring surface PM2.5 concentration due to its extensive spatial and temporal coverage. Satellite-derived PM2.5 estimation strongly relies on an accurate representation of the relationship between ground PM2.5 and satellite aerosol optical depth (AOD). Due to the limitation of satellite AOD data, most studies examined the relationship at a coarse-resolution (i.e., ≥ 10 km) scale; more effort is still needed to better understand the relationship between in-situ PM2.5 and AOD at finer spatial scales. While PM2.5 and AOD could have obvious temporal variations, few studies have examined the diurnal variation in their relationship. Considerable uncertainty therefore still exists in satellite-derived PM2.5 estimation due to these research gaps. Taking advantage of the newly released fine-spatial-resolution satellite AOD data derived by the Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) algorithm and real-time ground aerosol and PM2.5 measurements, this study explicitly explored the relationship between PM2.5 and AOD and its plausible impact factors including meteorological parameters and topography in mainland China during 2019, at various spatial and temporal scales. Coefficient of variation, Pearson correlation coefficient and slope of linear regression model were used. Spatially, stronger correlations mainly occurred in northern and eastern China and linear slope in northern inland regions was on average larger than those in other areas. Temporally, the PM2.5-AOD correlation peaked in the noon and afternoon and reached the maximum in winter. Simultaneously considering relative humidity (RH) and planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) in the relationship can improve the correlation but the effect of RH and PBLH on the correlation varied spatially and temporally, both in strength and direction. In addition, the largest correlation occurred at 400–600 m primarily in basin terrain such as Sichuan Basin, Shanxi-Shaanxi Basins and Junggar Basin. MAIAC 1-km AOD can better represent the ground-level fine particulate matter in most domains with exceptions such as in very high terrain i.e. Tibetan Plateau and north-central China i.e. Qinghai and Gansu. Findings in this study have useful implications for satellite-based PM2.5 monitoring and will further inform the understanding of the aerosol variation and PM2.5 pollution status in mainland China.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2231
Author(s):  
Débora Souza Alvim ◽  
Júlio Barboza Chiquetto ◽  
Monica Tais Siqueira D’Amelio ◽  
Bushra Khalid ◽  
Dirceu Luis Herdies ◽  
...  

The scope of this work was to evaluate simulated carbon monoxide (CO) and aerosol optical depth (AOD) from the CAM-chem model against observed satellite data and additionally explore the empirical relationship of CO, AOD and fire radiative power (FRP). The simulated seasonal global concentrations of CO and AOD were compared, respectively, with the Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) and the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite products for the period 2010–2014. The CAM-chem simulations were performed with two configurations: (A) tropospheric-only; and (B) tropospheric with stratospheric chemistry. Our results show that the spatial and seasonal distributions of CO and AOD were reasonably reproduced in both model configurations, except over central China, central Africa and equatorial regions of the Atlantic and Western Pacific, where CO was overestimated by 10–50 ppb. In configuration B, the positive CO bias was significantly reduced due to the inclusion of dry deposition, which was not present in the model configuration A. There was greater CO loss due to the chemical reactions, and shorter lifetime of the species with stratospheric chemistry. In summary, the model has difficulty in capturing the exact location of the maxima of the seasonal AOD distributions in both configurations. The AOD was overestimated by 0.1 to 0.25 over desert regions of Africa, the Middle East and Asia in both configurations, but the positive bias was even higher in the version with added stratospheric chemistry. By contrast, the AOD was underestimated over regions associated with anthropogenic activity, such as eastern China and northern India. Concerning the correlations between CO, AOD and FRP, high CO is found during March–April–May (MAM) in the Northern Hemisphere, mainly in China. In the Southern Hemisphere, high CO, AOD, and FRP values were found during August–September–October (ASO) due to fires, mostly in South America and South Africa. In South America, high AOD levels were observed over subtropical Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Sparsely urbanized regions showed higher correlations between CO and FRP (0.7–0.9), particularly in tropical areas, such as the western Amazon region. There was a high correlation between CO and aerosols from biomass burning at the transition between the forest and savanna environments over eastern and central Africa. It was also possible to observe the transport of these pollutants from the African continent to the Brazilian coast. High correlations between CO and AOD were found over southeastern Asian countries, and correlations between FRP and AOD (0.5–0.8) were found over higher latitude regions such as Canada and Siberia as well as in tropical areas. Higher correlations between CO and FRP are observed in Savanna and Tropical forests (South America, Central America, Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia) than FRP x AOD. In contrast, boreal forests in Russia, particularly in Siberia, show a higher FRP x AOD correlation than FRP x CO. In tropical forests, CO production is likely favored over aerosol, while in temperate forests, aerosol production is more than CO compared to tropical forests. On the east coast of the United States, the eastern border of the USA with Canada, eastern China, on the border between China, Russia, and Mongolia, and the border between North India and China, there is a high correlation of CO x AOD and a low correlation between FRP with both CO and AOD. Therefore, such emissions in these regions are not generated by forest fires but by industries and vehicular emissions since these are densely populated regions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 17251-17281 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Xu ◽  
R. V. Martin ◽  
A. van Donkelaar ◽  
J. Kim ◽  
M. Choi ◽  
...  

Abstract. We determine and interpret fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations in East China for January to December 2013 at a horizontal resolution of 6 km from aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieved from the Korean Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) satellite instrument. We implement a set of filters to minimize cloud contamination in GOCI AOD. Evaluation of filtered GOCI AOD with AOD from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) indicates significant agreement with mean fractional bias (MFB) in Beijing of 6.7 % and northern Taiwan of −1.2 %. We use a global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) to relate the total column AOD to the near-surface PM2.5. The simulated PM2.5/AOD ratio exhibits high consistency with ground-based measurements (MFB = −0.52–8.0 %). We evaluate the satellite-derived PM2.5 vs. the ground-level PM2.5 in 2013 measured by the China Environmental Monitoring Center. Significant agreement is found between GOCI-derived PM2.5 and in-situ observations in both annual averages (r = 0.81, N = 494) and monthly averages (MFB = 13.1 %), indicating GOCI provides valuable data for air quality studies in Northeast Asia. The GEOS-Chem simulated chemical speciation of GOCI-derived PM2.5 reveals that secondary inorganics (SO42−, NO3−, NH4+) and organic matter are the most significant components. Biofuel emissions in northern China for heating are responsible for an increase in the concentration of organic matter in winter. The population-weighted GOCI-derived PM2.5 over East China for 2013 is 53.8 μg m−3, threatening the health and life expectancy of its 600 million residents.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yerong Wu ◽  
Martin de Graaf ◽  
Massimo Menenti

Abstract. Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) retrieved from MOderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measurements over land, can be improved by taking into account the surface Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF), as shown in a previous study (Wu et al., 2016). However, the relationship of the surface reflectance between visible and short wave Infrared band that applied in the previous study, can lead to an angular dependence of the AOD retrieval. This has at least two reasons. The relationship based on the assumption of isotropic reflection or Lambertian surface is not suitable for the surface directional-directional reflectance. On the other hand, although the relationship varies with the surface cover type by considering the vegetation index NDVI_SWIR, this index itself has a directional effect and affects the estimation of the surface reflection, and finally can lead to some errors in the AOD retrieval. To improve this situation, we derived a new relationship for the spectral surface directional-directional reflectance in this study, using 3 years of dataset from AERONET-based Surface Reflectance Validation Network (ASRVN). To test the performance of the new algorithm, three case studies were used: 2 years of data from Eastern China and North America, and 4 months of data from the global land. The results show that the angular effects of the AOD retrieval are largely reduced in most cases. Particularly, for the global land case, the AOD retrieval was improved by the new algorithm compared to the previous study and MODIS collection 6 dark target algorithm, with the increase of 2.5 % and 5 % AOD retrievals falling within the expected accuracy level ±(0.05 + 15 %), respectively.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2324
Author(s):  
Lianfa Li

Aerosols play an important role in climate change, and ground aerosols (e.g., fine particulate matter, abbreviated as PM2.5) are associated with a variety of health problems. Due to clouds and high reflectance conditions, satellite-derived aerosol optical depth (AOD) products usually have large percentages of missing values (e.g., on average greater than 60% for mainland China), which limits their applicability. In this study, we generated grid maps of high-resolution, daily complete AOD and ground aerosol coefficients for the large study area of mainland China from 2015 to 2018. Based on the AOD retrieved using the recent Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction advanced algorithm, we added a geographic zoning factor to account for variability in meteorology, and developed an adaptive method based on the improved full residual deep network (with attention layers) to impute extensively missing AOD in the whole study area consistently and reliably. Furthermore, we generated high-resolution grid maps of complete AOD and ground aerosol coefficients. Overall, compared with the original residual model, in the independent test of 20% samples, our daily models achieved an average test R2 of 0.90 (an improvement of approximately 5%) with a range of 0.75–0.97 (average test root mean square error: 0.075). This high test performance shows the validity of AOD imputation. In the evaluation using the ground AOD data from six Aerosol Robotic Network monitoring stations, our method obtained an R2 of 0.78, which further illustrated the reliability of the dataset. In addition, ground aerosol coefficients were generated to provide an improved correlation with PM2.5. With the complete AOD data and ground coefficients, we presented and interpreted their spatiotemporal variations in mainland China. This study has important implications for using satellite-derived AOD to estimate aerosol air pollutants.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (22) ◽  
pp. 13133-13144 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.-W. Xu ◽  
R. V. Martin ◽  
A. van Donkelaar ◽  
J. Kim ◽  
M. Choi ◽  
...  

Abstract. We determine and interpret fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations in eastern China for January to December 2013 at a horizontal resolution of 6 km from aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieved from the Korean geostationary ocean color imager (GOCI) satellite instrument. We implement a set of filters to minimize cloud contamination in GOCI AOD. Evaluation of filtered GOCI AOD with AOD from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) indicates significant agreement with mean fractional bias (MFB) in Beijing of 6.7 % and northern Taiwan of −1.2 %. We use a global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) to relate the total column AOD to the near-surface PM2.5. The simulated PM2.5 / AOD ratio exhibits high consistency with ground-based measurements in Taiwan (MFB = −0.52 %) and Beijing (MFB = −8.0 %). We evaluate the satellite-derived PM2.5 versus the ground-level PM2.5 in 2013 measured by the China Environmental Monitoring Center. Significant agreement is found between GOCI-derived PM2.5 and in situ observations in both annual averages (r2 = 0.66, N = 494) and monthly averages (relative RMSE = 18.3 %), indicating GOCI provides valuable data for air quality studies in Northeast Asia. The GEOS-Chem simulated chemical composition of GOCI-derived PM2.5 reveals that secondary inorganics (SO42-, NO3-, NH4+) and organic matter are the most significant components. Biofuel emissions in northern China for heating increase the concentration of organic matter in winter. The population-weighted GOCI-derived PM2.5 over eastern China for 2013 is 53.8 μg m−3, with 400 million residents in regions that exceed the Interim Target-1 of the World Health Organization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 244 ◽  
pp. 117949 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aline Santos Damascena ◽  
Márcia Akemi Yamasoe ◽  
Vitor Souza Martins ◽  
Jorge Rosas ◽  
Noelia Rojas Benavente ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Chudnovsky ◽  
A. Lyapustin ◽  
Y. Wang ◽  
C. Tang ◽  
J. Schwartz ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) provides daily global coverage, but the 10 km resolution of its aerosol optical depth (AOD) product is not suitable for studying spatial variability of aerosols in urban areas. Recently, a new Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) algorithm was developed for MODIS which provides AOD at 1 km resolution. Using MAIAC data, the relationship between MAIAC AOD and PM2.5 as measured by the 27 EPA ground monitoring stations was investigated. These results were also compared to conventional MODIS 10 km AOD retrievals (MOD04) for the same days and locations. The coefficients of determination for MOD04 and for MAIAC are R2 =0.45 and 0.50 respectively, suggested that AOD is a reasonably good proxy for PM2.5 ground concentrations. Finally, we studied the relationship between PM2.5 and AOD at the intra-urban scale (≤10 km) in Boston. The fine resolution results indicated spatial variability in particle concentration at a sub-10 kilometer scale. A local analysis for the Boston area showed that the AOD-PM2.5 relationship does not depend on relative humidity and air temperatures below ~7 °C. The correlation improves for temperatures above 7–16 °C. We found no dependence on the boundary layer height except when the former was in the range 250–500 m. Finally, we apply a mixed effects model approach to MAIAC aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrievals from MODIS to predict PM2.5 concentrations within the greater Boston area. With this approach we can control for the inherent day-to-day variability in the AOD-PM2.5 relationship, which depends on time-varying parameters such as particle optical properties, vertical and diurnal concentration profiles and ground surface reflectance. Our results show that the model-predicted PM2.5 mass concentrations are highly correlated with the actual observations (out-of-sample R2 of 0.86). Therefore, adjustment for the daily variability in the AOD-PM2.5 relationship provides a means for obtaining spatially-resolved PM2.5 concentrations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 1095 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmihenna Jääskeläinen ◽  
Terhikki Manninen ◽  
Johanna Tamminen ◽  
Marko Laine

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