Aerosol optical thickness from modis data at 500M resolution for two extreme aerosol events analysis

Abstract

In addition to climate-related processes, aerosol effects are also enormous in regional/local atmospheric phenomena. Fine resolution satellite data can be used to provide a macro-view of extreme aerosol events. The Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) for two extreme aerosol events were retrieved with spatial resolution 500m over East of China and Washington state, USA, respectively. Validation confirms that the retrieval would be trustable to some extent. Retrieved AOT at 500m resolution, NASA's AOT products from MODIS data at 10km resolution and NASA's snapshot views are utilized to analyze these two extreme aerosol events. Retrieved AOT maps at 500m resolution reveal much of the tendency and are smoother, which would be complementary to NASA products.