An empirical relationship between satellite-derived aerosol optical thickness and ground-measured PM₂.₅ mass in Manila Observatory

Abstract

This paper aims to establish an empirical relationship between aerosol optical thickness retrievals from the MODIS onboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites and particulate matter (PM₂.₅) mass concentrations derived from a ß-ray sampler at the Manila Observatory. Results show that retrievals facing the Eastern part of Luzon underestimate the AOT retrievals over MO and by discarding these retrievals, a high correlation between the bin-averaged AOT and PM₂.₅ is obtained (R²=0.9022).