Using infrared geostationary remote sensing to determine particulate matter ground-level composition and concentration

AbstractSpeciated ground-level aerosol concentrations are required to understand and mitigate health impacts from dust storms, wildfires, and other aerosol emissions. Globally, surface monitoring is limited due to cost and infrastructure demands. While remote sensing can help estimate respirable (i.e. ground level) concentrations, current observations are restricted by inadequate spatiotemporal resolution, uncertainty in aerosol type, particle size, and vertical profile. One key issue with current remote sensing datasets is that they are derived from reflectances observed by polar-orbiting imagers, which means that aerosol is only derived during the daytime and only once or twice per day. Newer quantification methods using geostationary infrared (IR) data have focussed on detecting the presence, or absence, of an event. The determination of aerosol composition or particle size using IR exclusively has received little attention. This manuscript summarizes four scientific papers, published as part of a larger study, and identifies requirements for (a) using infrared radiance observations to obtain continual (i.e. day and night) concentration estimates; (b) increasing temporal resolution by using geostationary satellites; (c) utilizing all infrared channels to maximize spectral differences due to compositional changes; and (d) applying a high-pass filter (brightness temperature differences) to identify compositional variability. Additionally, (e) a preliminary calibration method...
Source: Air Quality, Atmosphere and Health - Category: Environmental Health Source Type: research