Monitoring of Air Pollution over Urban Area from MODIS

Air pollution, especially caused by aerosol plumes, are of considerable interest to studies in climate change and air quality. In this paper, the monitoring of the heavy air pollution episode from October 25-October 26, 2007 over Beijing urban area was successfully implemented from Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) retrieved from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measurements. The transport of AOT loading was investigated by Single-Particle Langrangian Integrated Trajectories (HYSPLIT) transport and dispersion model. Moreover, the high spatio-temporal frequency of the AOT (twice per day at 2 wavelengths) from MODIS demonstrates that the MODIS can be potentially used to routinely monitor the air pollution over land, especially urban area, which is the main source of aerosol particles.