Aerosol optical depth retrieval over land using FY-3A data and its application in dust monitoring

The accuracy of aerosol optical depth (AOD) products from polar-orbit satellites such as FengYun-3A (FY3A) is limited, especially over land because it is hard to discriminate the contribution of the observed signal reflected by the surface from the one scattered and absorbed by the aerosols over bright surface. In this paper, an approach by exploiting the synergy of FengYun-3A (FY-3A) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data were presented. The derived AOD compared to Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) observation and retrieval absolute error around 0.1 is found, with R2 of 0.77. Moreover, a dust episode was presented in Mongolia on late March, 2010.; By using HYbrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) mode as well as the meteorological parameters, we analyzed the advection and dispersion of this event, its transport effect for the episode and its influence. Our data demonstrated that AOD increased up to 2.0 during the burning phase and then returned to normal values (0.2- 0.5), and the aerosol properties various, including both the AOD and aerosol type or source, which has a vertical distribution difference, fully in line with transport process. This method should be wildly used on FY series satellite.