MERSI Ten-Day Global Land Aerosol Optical Thickness Product

Ten-day aerosol optical thickness products over land are derived from the FY3A MERSI instrument. Each 5km grid point contains aerosol optical thickness for three spectral bands (470nm, 550nm, 650nm), the Angstrom coefficient, and the small particle ratio. The data is produced by the SCIOPS organization.

Use Cases

• Analyzing spatial patterns of aerosol optical thickness at 470nm, 550nm, and 650nm to map pollution plumes.
• Calculating regional aerosol Angstrom coefficient trends to infer dominant particle size distributions.
• Correlating aerosol small particle ratio with land cover types to study emission sources.
• Assimilating ten-day aggregated 5km resolution aerosol data into climate models.
• Tracking seasonal variations in aerosol properties using the ten-day composite time series.

Strengths

• Global spatial coverage with data over all land areas.
• Provides three specific aerosol optical thickness bands (470nm, 550nm, 650nm).
• Includes derived parameters like Angstrom coefficient and small particle ratio per grid point.

Limitations

• Spatial resolution is 5km, limiting analysis of fine-scale aerosol features.
• Product is limited to aerosol over land, with no data for oceanic regions.
• Precise temporal coverage, row count, and data recency are unknown.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata (platform), data from FY3A MERSI instrument.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing retrieval processed into Level 3 ten-day composite products.

Freshness

Update frequency is ten-day composites, but specific recency is null.

Geography

Global land coverage.