Retrieval of AOD from Sentinel-2 Data based on Deep Blue Algorithm

Medium-to-high resolution aerosol information is of great significance for surface reflectance inversion and urban ambient air quality monitoring. However, the high-precision aerosol optical thickness (AOD) retrieval in bright areas, such as cities and sparse vegetation areas, has long plagued the quantitative remote sensing applications. Taking Beijing urban area and Baotou desert area as examples, using MODIS surface reflectance products to construct prior knowledge constraints, the AOD inversion of 13 scenes Sentinel-2 images in bright areas was realized based on the deep blue algorithm. To verify the accuracy of the algorithm, the result were compared with the Sentinel-2 official algorithm processing result, the Landsat-8 official aerosol products and the ground-measured AOD data from the Global Aerosol Automated Observing Network (AERONET). The results indicate that the retrieved AOD values from deep blue algorithm is significantly correlated with the measured value of AERONET(R² > 0.90, RMSE = 0.056 0), and the AOD spatial distributions are also well consistent with those from Landsat-8, which reflects the characteristics of human activities. But, whether in desert bright area or urban bright area with less vegetation, the AOD values retrieved by Sen2Cor plug-in are fixed, no spatial distribution and do not conform to the actual situation. In general, compared with the current official products, the deep blue algorithm is suitable for aerosol retrieval in high-brightness areas of Sentinel-2 data，and has obvious advantages in terms of estimation accuracy and spatial distribution trend.