Research Of China’s Land Aerosol Optical Properties And Vertical Distribution Based On Satellite Remote Sensing Data

In recent years, with the rapid development of economy in China, the size of cities and the proportion of urban population have been increasing, accompanied by frequently-occurred air pollution events, which seriously affected the normal life and work of people. Atmospheric environment issues have been concerned by the people and governments. Researches and analyses on the atmosphere over the land are imperative. Based on satellite data from MODIS and CALIPSO, ground-based AERONET data and air pollution monitoring data, relevant characteristics of aerosol and air quality index are analyzed, and aerosol spatial distribution and aerosol types were investigated.MODIS Level 3 products from 2004 to 2013 were used to analyze the characteristics of spatial distribution, monthly, seasonal, annual variation and the trend of aerosol optical depth (AOD) over China. The research found that, in the eastern region, such as Sichuan, Henan, Hebei and Shandong province, the values of AOD are usually higher than in the other regions. And in the northeastern region, the values of AOD show increasing trend year by year. At different months and seasons the values of AOD have big variations. Such as in the eastern part of China, the highest AOD value occurred in June, while AOD in winter is relatively low. So the aerosol is affected by population, topography, climate and economy obviously.CALIPSO Level 2 products from 2009 to 2014 were utilized to analyze the characteristics of vertical distribution of AOD over China. It was found that the air pollution, near the ground, is mainly affected by dust and pollution aerosol. Most of them is distributed within the height of 1km. Using the vertical profiles of lidar depolarization ratio, we can classify aerosol types in China easily. The results showed that dust and pollution aerosol play an important role all over the country. We should pay special attention to them in order to improve the atmosphere environments we live.The height of atmospheric boundary layer(ABL) was calculated from lidar attenuated backscatter profile. It was found that the height of ABL was usually about 3km in Qingdao. Then the AOD with ABL less than 3km in the CALIPSO lidar aerosol layer product were extracted to do correlation analysis with the ground-based observations of air quality index (AQI), PM10 and PM2.5 concentration data in Qingdao. The result showed higher correlation coefficients compared with the column AODs.