Calendar Event Details
AEROCENTER: Johana Carmona
Affiliation: NASA GSFC, Code 614
Event Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Location: G133
Time: 11:00 AM
Exploring the relationship between Aerosol Optical Depth and PM2.5 over Monterrey, Mexico
Aerosol, or Airborne Particulate Matter (PM) is an air pollutant. Many health issues are linked PM exposure, including disruptions in respiratory and cardiovascular systems. Current air-quality standards for PM are based on total mass of PM2.5 (PM with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 2.5 µm) and PM10 (≤10 µm). Although PM concentration is most accurately measured using ground-based devices, the spatial coverage is too sparse to determine local and regional variation of PM. Satellites, by way of retrieving aerosol optical depth (AOD), offer the opportunity to overcome the spatial limitation of sparse ground-based measurements. However, using satellites to infer surface PM concentrations is challenging, because many factors can affect the relationship between total-column AOD and surface-level PM.
In this study, different regression and neural network techniques were applied to explore the relationship between AOD and PM2.5 at Monterrey Metropolitan Area (MMA). MMA is located in north-eastern Mexico, and has the highest levels of PM pollution of any region within the country. A set of daily means of meteorological and air quality data were processed from 5 routine air quality monitoring stations of the MMA, along with daily AOD data retrieved from the MODIS sensor onboard the Aqua satellite. We are evaluating MODIS data at both 3 x 3 km and 10 x 10 km grid resolution. The best performance (R>0.60) is reached using data from the AOD 550 Dark Target Deep Blue combined algorithm at 10 x 10 km grid resolution, in combination with Temperature, Relative Humidity, Wind Speed, Wind Direction, Rain, Pressure and Solar Radiation from the ground-based stations.
Posted or updated: Monday, November 9, 2015
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