The aerosol distribution in Beijing and peripheral cities agglomeration (BPCA) and its re- gional climatic effect are investigated on the basis of the statistical analyses of satellite Total Ozone Map- ping Spectrometer (TOMS) retrieval aerosol optical depth (AOD) and the meteorological data of sunshine duration, fog days, and low cloud cover, observed at Beijing and its peripheral meteorological stations. The analysis on multi-samples variational correction of the satellite remote sensing Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) AOD under the clear sky and stable weather condition in conjunction with surface observations reveal that there was a “triangle-like” distribution pattern of the high values of aerosols in the southern “valley” of the “U-shape” megarelief of Beijing and its peripheral areas. The distribution pattern suggests that the large-scale transfer and diffusion of city agglomeration pollutants might form a relatively persistent characteristic spatial distribution of city agglomeration pollutants much larger than city-scale. Under the background of the particular megarelief effect of Beijing and periph- eral areas, the high value area of TOMS AOD, as well as regional correlation distribution between clear sky sunshine duration and TOMS AOD are also similar to the composite image of MODIS AOD variational fields, that is to say, the effect of atmospheric aerosols was very distinctive in Beijing and peripheral areas. The high value area of the negative correlation between clear sky sunshine duration and TOMS AOD ap-proximately accorded with the significant negative value area of the sunshine duration deviations of the 1980s to the 1990s, and the daily variations of the AOD also showed an anti-phase relation with those of clear sky sunshine duration. The above high cor- relation area of the urban aerosol impact of Beijing- Tianjin region leant towards south peripheral area, with its “center of gravity” in the south of Beijing- Tianjin agglomeration, and the main body of the
XU XiangdeSHI XiaohuiZHANG ShengjunDING GuoanMIAO QiujuZHOU Li
The direct correlation between NASA MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD) products and the air pollution index (API) in Beijing was found relatively low based on the long-term comparison analysis. The correlation improved to some extent after taking account of the seasonal variation of scale height and the vertical distribution of aerosols. The correlation coefficient further improved significantly after considering the influencing factor of Relative Humidity (RH). This study concluded that satellite remote-sensing could serve as an efficient tool for monitoring the spatial distribution of particulate pollutants on the ground-level, as long as corrections have been made in the two aforementioned processes. Taking advantage of the MODIS information, we analyzed a pollution episode occurring in October 2004 in Beijing. It indicated that satellite remote-sensing could describe the formation process of the ground-level pollution episode in detail, and showed that regional transport and the topography were crucial factors to air quality in Beijing. The annual averaged distribution in the urban area of Beijing and its surroundings could be also obtained from the high-resolution retrieval results, implicating that high-resolution satellite remote-sensing might be potential in monitoring the source distribution of particulate pollutants.
