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Using Satellite Aerosol Retrievals to Monitor Surface Particulate Air QualityThe MODIS and MISR aerosol products were designed nearly two decades ago for the purpose of climate applications. Since launch of Terra in 1999, these two sensors have provided global, quantitative information about column-integrated aerosol properties, including aerosol optical depth (AOD) and relative aerosol type parameters (such as Angstrom exponent). Although primarily designed for climate, the air quality (AQ) community quickly recognized that passive satellite products could be used for particulate air quality monitoring and forecasting. However, AOD and particulate matter (PM) concentrations have different units, and represent aerosol conditions in different layers of the atmosphere. Also, due to low visible contrast over brighter surface conditions, satellite-derived aerosol retrievals tend to have larger uncertainty in urban or populated regions. Nonetheless, the AQ community has made significant progress in relating column-integrated AOD at ambient relative humidity (RH) to surface PM concentrations at dried RH. Knowledge of aerosol optical and microphysical properties, ambient meteorological conditions, and especially vertical profile, are critical for physically relating AOD and PM. To make urban-scale maps of PM, we also must account for spatial variability. Since surface PM may vary on a finer spatial scale than the resolution of standard MODIS (10 km) and MISR (17km) products, we test higher-resolution versions of MODIS (3km) and MISR (1km research mode) retrievals. The recent (July 2011) DISCOVER-AQ campaign in the mid-Atlantic offers a comprehensive network of sun photometers (DRAGON) and other data that we use for validating the higher resolution satellite data. In the future, we expect that the wealth of aircraft and ground-based measurements, collected during DISCOVER-AQ, will help us quantitatively link remote sensed and ground-based measurements in the urban region.
Document ID
20120008717
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Levy, Robert C. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Remer, Lorraine A. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Kahn, Ralph A. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Chu, D. Allen (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Mattoo, Shana (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Holben, Brent N. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Schafer, Joel S. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
December 5, 2011
Subject Category
Environment Pollution
Report/Patent Number
GSFC.ABS.6077.2012
Meeting Information
Meeting: 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting
Location: San Francisco, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: December 5, 2011
End Date: December 9, 2011
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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