Chinese Satellites Provide Advanced Solutions to Modeling Small Particles in the Atmosphere

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The assimilation of aerosol optical depth (AOD) observational data from the Chinese satellite Fengyun-3A (FY-3A) can significantly improve the ability to model aerosol mass, according to Prof. Jinzhong MIN, Vice President at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

The assimilation of aerosol optical depth (AOD) observational data from the Chinese satellite Fengyun-3A (FY-3A) can significantly improve the ability to model aerosol mass, according to Prof. Jinzhong MIN, Vice President at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

Prof. MIN and his team—a group of researchers from the Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster of the Ministry of Education (KLME)/Joint International Research Laboratory of Climate and Environment Change (ILCEC)/Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology—have had their findings published in Advances of Atmospheric Sciences.

“Atmospheric aerosols have significant impacts on the climate and environment. In particular, increasingly severe particulate matter pollution events are threatening public health and ecosystems,” says Prof. MIN.

"AOD can be used to test the calibration of satellite retrieval data, and is a key factor in determining the climatic effects of aerosol. However, there is a lack of data from ground-based observations of aerosols in East Asia,” he explains. “Thus, it is important to improve the accuracy of atmospheric chemical model predictions by combining satellite observations.”

Read more at Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Photo Credit: McKay Savage from London, UK via Wikimedia Commons