Validation of Terra/MODIS 3KM and 10KM Aerosol Optical Depth Over Yuan Island in the North Yellow Sea

Abstract

This study evaluates Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard terra Collection 6(C6) Dark Target (DT) Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) products at 10 km (MOD04_10k) and 3 km (MOD04_3k) spatial resolution against ground-based AOD observations over Yuan Island in the North Yellow Sea. MOD04_3k retrievals show better performance, with larger number of collocations, larger percentage of observations falling within EE, smaller RMSE and MAE, especially for spring. MODIS comparability with ground-based data is not monotonic with Quality Assured Confidence(QAC) value, valid data(QAC >0) are the most accurate data set for both MOD04_10k and MOD04_3k. For seasonal analysis, trends of MOD04_10k and MOD04_3k are similar, MODIS AOD data for autumn perform best, whereas data quality for spring is the worst, which might be due to the dust aerosol effect. In summary, Terra/MODIS AOD data(QAC >0) at 3km are slightly more reliable than data at 10km over Yuan Island in the North Yellow Sea.