Continental aerosol properties and absorption retrieval using random forest machine learning method specific to geostationary remote sensing

The utilization of satellite remote sensing images for retrieving aerosol optical parameters has been extensively discussed over the past few decades. While employing machine learning models is indeed a viable approach, a significant portion of these studies still rely on redundant data. Moreover, the discussion regarding aerosol absorption, a crucial factor for determining aerosol radiative impact and distinguishing aerosol components, is limited in current machine learning studies. In this study, we propose a random forest model to retrieve high-precision aerosol properties and their absorption over land from Himawari-8 geostationary satellite images. Remarkably, this model attains a high degree of accuracy in estimating aerosol optical depth (AOD), absorption aerosol optical depth (AAOD), and single scattering albedo (SSA) of heavy air mass using only seven primary predictors (observational radiances or their mathematical combinations, geometries, and wavelength). For AOD, the new random forest model demonstrates excellent performance on an hourly scale (R² ≥ 0.89, MAE < 0.07, RMSE <0.13), >80% of the samples fall within the expected error (EE) range. Concerning AAOD, the validation indicates that at least 65% of AAODs have a bias of ≤50%, with an R² exceeding 0.78, MAE ≤ 0.008 and RMSE ≤0.016. SSA also demonstrates a high accuracy (R² ≥ 0.57, MAE < 0.03, RMSE <0.05), with >70% of the results have an error ≤ 0.03. Through more comprehensive independent spatiotemporal cross validation, it can be determined that the model also offers reliable spatial and temporal predictions. The proposed RF model is capable of learning aerosol properties under most atmosphere scenarios, providing a reasonable conversion from predictors to AOD and AAOD/SSA under high aerosol loadings. The spatial patterns of these parameters suggest that the retrievals show considerable potential in capturing high aerosol loading in East Asia and biomass burning in Southeast Asia. The method introduced in this study offers a new approach to obtaining aerosol properties from geostationary satellite remote sensing, featuring a flexible process, simple inputs, high accuracy, and enhanced robustness. Additionally, it furnishes supplementary insights into aerosol absorption, presenting new possibilities in determining aerosol radiative impact and distinguishing aerosol components.