THE IMPORTANCE OF MIXING HEIGHT IN CHARACTERISING POLLUTION LEVELS FROM AEROSOL OPTICAL THICKNESS DERIVED BY SATELLITE

摘要

In the present study the horizontal distribution of columnar aerosol optical thickness derived at high spatial resolution from Earth observation satellite data in the Lombardy area (Italy) was converted to the horizontal distribution of optically effective aerosols concentration at the ground level. This was achieved by incorporating information on atmosphere's mixing height, at which pollutants released at ground level are vertically dispersed by convection or mechanical turbulence. The resulted fields compared favourably to pollutant concentration measurements provided by the ground stations. These results show that it is possible to calculate mean concentration fields by using the spatial distribution of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) measured by satellite normalized by the atmospheric mixing height. The advantage of satellites in measuring AOT is that they can capture all actual emissions compared to the models, which are based on inventoried data.