Validation, analysis, and comparison of MISR V23 aerosol optical depth products with MODIS and AERONET observations

Ruonan Fan; Yingying Ma; Shikuan Jin; Wei Gong; Boming Liu; Weiyan Wang; Hui Li; Yiqun Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159117

Validation, analysis, and comparison of MISR V23 aerosol optical depth products with MODIS and AERONET observations

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Jan 15;856(Pt 1):159117. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159117. Epub 2022 Sep 29.

Authors

Ruonan Fan¹, Yingying Ma¹, Shikuan Jin², Wei Gong³, Boming Liu¹, Weiyan Wang¹, Hui Li⁴, Yiqun Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, the People's Republic of China.
² State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, the People's Republic of China. Electronic address: jinsk@whu.edu.com.
³ School of Electronic Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, the People's Republic of China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, the People's Republic of China; School of Electronic Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, the People's Republic of China.

PMID: 36181813
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159117

Abstract

The latest Multi-angle Imaging Spectro Radiometer (MISR) Version (V) 23 aerosol optical depth (AOD) products were released, with an improved spatial resolution of 4.4 km, providing an unprecedented opportunity for the refined regional application. To ensure the reliability of their applications and build a scientific reference for the further optimization, it is imperative to conduct a comprehensive evaluation, especially for the unique size-resolved AOD products: small-size AOD (AOD_S, representing the contribution of fine-mode aerosols), medium-size AOD (AOD_M), and large-size AOD (AOD_L), and AOD_M+L represents the AOD part of coarse-mode aerosols. AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) and MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Collection (C) 6.1 aerosol products from 2001 to 2020 are utilized for the validation, analysis, and inter-comparison, considering three spatial scales and four key factors. In general, MISR V23 aerosol products show a good accuracy compared with AERONET. The best performance for all AOD products appears in forest units (the highest R ~ 0.93, data percentage within Expected Error bounds, %EE > 93), related to the inactive human activity and dark underlying surface. Dependences of retrieval deviations illustrate that the performance of MISR AOD deteriorates as aerosol loading increases. Namely, with the increase of aerosols, total AOD (AOD_T) and AOD_S show increasing negative deviations, while increasing positive deviations are observed for AOD_M+L. This suggests that the Empirical Orthogonal Functions do not perform well in this situation, since numerous aerosol particles can obstruct the underlying reflection and reduce the surface spectral contrast. In addition, AOD_T and AOD_S often exhibit anomalous positive deviations in areas with low vegetation cover, such as deserts, revealing that MISR will overestimate aerosol content over bright surfaces and in environments dominated by coarse-mode particles. The above findings not only deepen the understanding of MISR aerosols products from multiple perspectives, but also provide useful information for the product improvement.

Keywords: AERONET; MISR; MODIS; Size-resolved AOD; V23 4.4 km.

MeSH terms

Aerosols
Forests
Humans
Reproducibility of Results
Robotics*

Substances

Aerosols