On this Moodle page we are hosting a number of resources to help in handling datasets and prepare for the training course.
In order to be ready:
Atmospheric aerosols are of great importance to global climate because of their scattering as well as absorbing properties, in turn significantly influencing the Earth's radiation budget. In general, aerosols could offset climate warming by directly scattering the sunlight back to space and by indirectly enhancing cloud albedo, thereby cooling the climate. However, it is also known that absorbing aerosols (such as black carbon and dust) warm the atmosphere because of their absorption of sunlight, which in turn enhances climate warming.
The MODIS satellite sensors, onboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, provide a long-term climate data record of aerosols since the early 2000s. The specific quantity retrieved by MODIS data pertaining to aerosols is the column-integrated Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) which is a measure of the total extinction (scattering and absorption effects) due to aerosols in the atmosphere.
Aerosol Optical Depth from Terra MODIS data averaged for June 2017 [source- https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/global-maps/MODAL2_M_AER_OD]
The MODIS aerosol datasets have been widely used in the climate science and air pollution/air quality research communities worldwide in the last two decades, with extensive validation efforts carried out by the MODIS science team and researchers around the world. The MODIS aerosol data are extensively used in global and regional studies related to aerosol characterization, aerosol radiative effects, aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions and long-term aerosol trend analysis. In recent years, the MODIS AOD products are increasingly being used in global and regional air quality assessment and monitoring as well, owing to the granularity and accuracy of the AOD data. Another relevant area of research has been application of MODIS aerosol datasets in transboundary air pollution transport studies associated with extreme air pollution episodes, forest fires, biomass burning and desert dust outbreaks.
AOD data from MODIS are available on a daily basis in Level-2 (swath data) and Level-3 (gridded data) as well as on a monthly mean basis (Level-3 data). The Level-2 AOD data are available as high resolution data at 10 km, 3 km and 1 km resolution - suitable for aerosol characterization and air quality studies, whereas the Level-3 data are uniformly gridded to 1 degree x 1 degree spatial resolution - more applicable for aerosol-climate and large-scale aerosol transport studies.
Relevant parameters in MODIS Level-2 Aerosol Optical Depth product files (MOD04 for Terra, MYD04 for Aqua)
We focus on the ladsweb site to download MODIS Level-2 aerosol optical depth (AOD) product.
Install the prerequisite Python packages necessary to handle all data. Packages include hdf, basemap matplotlib, xarray and ncdf packages that don't come preinstalled in anaconda and will need to be installed separately for reading and mapping datasets in different format (MODIS in hdf, other in NCDF).