Publication Date:
2018-10-12
Description:
This study attempts to infer aerosol vertical structure in the urban boundary layer using passive hyperspectral measurements. A spectral sorting technique is developed to retrieve total aerosol optical depth (AOD) and effective aerosol layer height (ALH) from hyperspectral measurements in the 1.27-μm oxygen absorption band by the mountaintop Fourier Transform Spectrometer at the California Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote Sensing instrument (1,673 m above sea level) overlooking the LA basin. Comparison to AOD measurements from Aerosol Robotic Network and aerosol backscatter profile measurements from a Mini MicroPulse Lidar shows agreement, with coefficients of determination (r2) of 0.74 for AOD and 0.57 for effective ALH. On average, the AOD retrieval has an error of 24.9% and root-mean-square error of 0.013, while the effective ALH retrieval has an error of 7.8% and root-mean-square error of 67.01 m. The proposed method can potentially be applied to existing and future satellite missions with hyperspectral oxygen measurements to constrain aerosol vertical distribution on a global scale. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
Print ISSN:
0094-8276
Electronic ISSN:
1944-8007
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics