Monitoring the heavy fog using AOD derived from MODIS data

On Oct. 28^th, 2009, a heavy fog hit East China. From the MODIS RGB composite image, it can be seen clearly that, much of land of the area (110°-123°E, 30°-42°N) was covered by the heavy fog or cloud. Using MODIS multi-satellite algorithm for aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieval, we get the AOD Map at 470, 550 and 660 nm from MODIS data at 1km × 1km resolution. By Validating with the AERONET data, the results have good precision. The average relative error is about 10% and the correlation coefficient is as high as 0.88. Comparing with 10km MODIS aerosol products, our results can show more details because of the high resolution. From the AOD maps we can see the fog scope and the distribution as well as the relative thickness. Therefore, it is an effective method to monitor the fog.