Detecting Air Pollution from Space Using Image-based Method

Satellite sensors have provided new datasets for monitoring regional and urban air quality. Satellite sensors provide comprehensive geospatial information on air quality with both qualitative remotely sensed imagery and quantitative data, such as aerosol optical depth. This paper presents a new method for retrieving aerosol optical thickness. The method is based on the determination of the aerosol optical thickness through the radiative transfer calculations and the ‘tracking’ of the suitable darkest pixel in the scene. The proposed method that needs no a-priori information has been applied to LandsatTM & ETM+, Spot-5 and IKONOS data of three different geographical areas: West London, and Cyprus. The retrieved aerosol optical thickness values show high correlations with insitu visibility data acquired during the satellite overpass.