Abstract:The newly released MODIS Collection 6 aerosol products have been widely used to evaluate fine particulate matter with a 10 km Dark Target aerosol optic depth (DT AOD) product, a new 3 km DT AOD product and an enhanced Deep Blue (DB) AOD product. However, the representativeness of MODIS AOD products under different air quality conditions remains unclear. In this study, we obtained all three types of MODIS Terra AOD from 2001 to 2015 and Aqua AOD from 2003 to 2015 for the Beijing region to study the performance of the different AOD products (Collection 6) under different air quality situations. The validation of three MODIS AOD products suggests that DB AOD has the highest accuracy with an expected error (EE) envelope (containing at least 67% of the matchups on a scatter plot) of 0.05 + 0.15τ, followed by 10 km DT AOD (0.08 + 0.2τ) and 3 km DT AOD (0.35 + 0.15τ), specifically for Beijing. Near-surface PM 2.5 concentrations during the passage of MODIS from 2013 to 2015 were also obtained to categorize air quality as unpolluted, moderately, and heavily polluted, as well as to analyze the performance of the different AOD products under different air quality conditions. Very few MODIS 3 km DT retrievals appeared on heavily polluted days, making it almost impossible to play an effective role in air quality applications in Beijing. While the DB AOD allowed for considerable retrievals under all air quality conditions, it had a coarse spatial resolution. These results demonstrate that the MODIS 3 km DT AOD product may not be the appropriate proxy to be used in the satellite retrieval of surface PM 2.5 , especially for those areas with frequent haze-fog events like Beijing.
MODIS (MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) aerosol products are the most widely used satellite retrieved aerosol optic depth (AOD) products, which compensate for the spatial lack of ground-based sun photometer observations. The newly released Collection 6 (C6) aerosol products have some improvements compared to the Collection 5.1 (C5.1) products with optimized algorithms and newly revised upstream products. Additionally, a three-kilometer resolution AOD product was added in the C6 product. In this study, the accuracies and regional applicability of long-term (2001-2015) different MODIS C5.1 and C6 aerosol products in China were evaluated against the 16 AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) observations with observations over more than three years. The overall analysis indicates that the C6 DT (Dark Target) 10 km products slightly improved the retrieval accuracies, with about 3% more data falling within the Expected Error (EE) envelope. However, for Deep Blue (DB) products, the C6 algorithm significantly improved the accuracy over all of China, and increased the successful retrieval number by extending retrieval coverages. Regional analysis demonstrated that the C6 DT 10 km product did not perform well in East China, with only 33.5% of retrievals falling within the EE envelope. For the DB product, the C6 algorithm significantly increased the number successfully retrieved, and was more accurate in all four regions in China. The validation of the DT 3 km product suggests large differences existed between the Terra and Aqua results. The accuracy of the Aqua DT 3 km product is obviously higher than that of the Terra DT 3 km product. The results of the study suggest that proper AOD products need to be considered when evaluating aerosol loading situations in different regions in China.
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