An Improved Aerosol Retrieval Algorithm Based on Nonlinear Surface Model From FY-3D/MERSI-II Remote Sensing Data

This study explores a new scheme to retrieve the global aerosol optical depth (AOD) over land for the advanced Medium Resolution Spectral Imager (MERSI-II) aboard the Fengyun-3D (FY-3D) satellite based on the dark target (DT) algorithm. The main improvement is that the global surface reflectance (SR) model nonlinearly varies with the solar zenith angle and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVIswir) is made, which is more complex relative to that of Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MODIS) operational algorithm. Our AOD retrievals are compared with an aerosol robotic network (AERONET) AOD and cross evaluated with Aqua/MODIS, respectively. Overall, the MERSI-II retrieved results over the global scale have good consistency with the AERONET observations; on the same condition, the percentage of matchups within the expected error (EE: ±0.05 ± 0.15AOD) is 67.06%, which is slightly lower than the percentage of MODIS (79.84%). On a spatial scale, the coverage of MERSI-II retrievals at one granule is significantly higher than that of MODIS, which is related to successful inversion of haze pixels and has retrieval ability in urban, grassland, and other surface types. The monthly mean AOD values retrieved by MERSI-II are close to those of MODIS, indicating that MERS-II has similar quantitative capability and application potential as its international counterparts.