Evaluation of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aerosol products at two Aerosol Robotic Network stations in China

Abstract

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aerosol products have been used to address aerosol climatic issues in many parts of the world, but their quality has yet to be determined over China. This paper presents a thorough evaluation of aerosol optical depth (AOD) data retrieved from MODIS collections 4 (C004) and 5 (C005) at two AERONET sites in northern and southeastern China. Established under the aegis of the East Asian Study of Tropospheric Aerosols: An International Regional Experiment (EAST-AIRE) project, the two sites, Xianghe and Taihu, have distinct ecosystems and climate regimes, resulting in differences in retrieval performance. At the rural northeastern site (Xianghe), MODIS C004 retrievals generally overestimate AOD at 550 nm during clean days, with the largest errors occurring during winter. In the warm and humid regions of southeastern China (Taihu), MODIS C004 retrievals overestimate AOD throughout the year. The systematic error at Xianghe is primarily due to the fixed surface reflectance ratio, while as the error at Taihu is mainly caused by the choice of the single scattering albedo (SSA) for the fine model aerosols. Both problems are alleviated considerably in the C005. The comparisons between C005 retrievals and AERONET data show much higher correlation coefficient, lower offset and a slope closer to unity. Also, the variability of AOD retrieval among neighboring pixels is reduced by several factors. The strong overestimation problem at small AOD values was fixed by using dynamic reflectance ratios that vary with the vegetation index and scattering angle. However, significant uncertainties remain because of the use of highly simplified aerosol models. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.