Chapters authored
Aerosols Monitored by Satellite Remote Sensing
Aerosols, small particles suspended in the atmosphere, affect the air quality and climate change. Their distributions can be monitored by satellite remote sensing. Many images of aerosol properties are available from websites as the by-products of the atmospheric correction of the satellite data. Their qualities depend on the accuracy of the atmospheric correction algorithms. The approaches of the atmospheric correction for land and ocean are different due to the large difference of the ground reflectance between land and ocean. A unified atmospheric correction (UAC) approach is developed to improve the accuracy of aerosol products over land, similar to those over ocean. This approach is developed to estimate the aerosol scattering reflectance from satellite data based on a lookup table (LUT) of in situ measured ground reflectance. The results show that the aerosol scattering reflectance can be completely separated from the satellite measured radiance over turbid waters and lands. The accuracy is validated with the mean relative errors of 22.1%. The vertical structures of the aerosols provide a new insight into the role of aerosols in regulating Earth's weather, climate, and air quality.
Part of the book: Aerosols