Variation of aerosol components impact greatly on air pollution and climate change, and remote sensing is able to detect aerosol composition properties while maintaining the natural states of ambient aerosol. Based on microphysical and optical properties of black carbon (BC), water soluble component (WASO), insoluble component (INSO) and mineral dust (DUST) provided by optical properties of aerosols and clouds (OPAC) model, mass concentration of the four components were retrieved and their contributions to total aerosol optical depth were calculated by using aerosol properties acquired from ground-based sun-sky radiometer measurements during APEC Forum days in Beijing in 2014. Results show that the average AOD (440 nm) on APEC Forum days (0.25) is much lower than that of pre-Forum days (0.72) and post-Forum days (0.57), and WASO dominantly contributes to the total aerosol optical depth. Mass density of BC, WASO, INSO, DUST is respectively 0.8 μg/m3, 139.6 μg/m3, 184.2 μg/m3, 194.3 μg/m3 on pre-Forum days, 1.1 μg/m3, 56.4 μg/m3, 40.3 μg/m3, 7.8 μg/m3 on APEC Forum days, and 1.0 μg/m3, 126.6 μg/m3, 157.1 μg/m3, 30.9 μg/m3 on post-Forum days. BC mass density doesn’t change much during APEC Forum, while the numeric numbers of mass densities of WASO, INSO, and DUST in APEC Forum days are much lower compared to those of pre-Forum days and post-Forum days. This illustrates clearly that the control measures for improving air quality undertaken by the government have been taking effect during APEC Forum days. In－situ measurements of BC concentration were used by aethalometer to verify the BC retrieval and find that the retrieved BC mass concentration agrees well with measured content with the correlation coefficient R2 of 0.68.

An algorithm was developed to retrieve aerosol optical depth (AOD) from AVHRR over land for climate change studies. The multiple regression method was employed by using spatially and temporally collocated MODIS AOD and AVHRR Level 1b measurements to generate regression coefficients from 2008 to 2011. Validation with AERONET AOD measurements and comparison with MODIS AOD product have been conducted to evaluate the uncertainty of AVHRR AOD retrievals over land from 2003 to 2007. It is found that the distribution pattern of the seasonal mean AOD is reasonable. The AOD from AVHRR has a tendency to be consistent with that from MYD04. Compared AVHRR with AERONET in Beijing and Xianghe, the correlation coefficients are larger than 0.6. These results show that the multiple regression method has the potential to retrieve a long-term AOD climatology data from AVHRR over land. Error sources about this retrieving algorithm were also discussed.

Sponsored by the project named “National Aeronautic Remote Sensing System”, an airborne two-wavelength polarization lidar is designed for detecting three-dimensional distributions of atmospheric aerosols. The field campaign, as well as the structures and key parameters of the lidar system are described. The preliminary result shows that this airborne lidar is well constructed and robust which can provide a significant airborne remote sensing platform for monitoring the aerosol’s optical and physical properties.

The inversion precision of atmospheric aerosol parameters can be more effectively improved by the combination of multi-angle polarization and radiation data, so the airborne experiment is designed and completed to obtain multi-angle polarization and radiation data. The self-developed multi-angle directional polarized camera (DPC) is equipped on the aircraft, and sun-photometer CE318 is mounted at ground stations, then aviation flight experiment was carried out by designing aircraft’s course series ground stations. The data obtained from airborne experiment is analyzed, and the results show that DPC on the aircraft can obtain high precision polarization and radiation data. The atmospheric aerosols optical depth is retrieved using the experiment data, and inversion error is less than 3%, which demonstrates validity of multi-angle polarization and radiation data from airborne experiment.

The Advanced Atmosphere Multi-angle Polarization Radiometer (AMPR) was developed by Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It provides multi-spectral, multi-angle and polarized data and can be used in the aerosol optical parameters detection. AMPR can be equipped on remote sensing plane to detect aerosol. Industry in Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan area are well developed, the observation of aerosol in the region are representative. In inversion process, the underlying surface polarization reflectance was obtained by atmospheric correction of observation data at 1640 nm waveband. Combined with the look-up table method and the utilization of multi-angle, multi-band and polarization information, aerosol optical thickness was obtained. After the comparison of inversion results and the synchronous ground observation data, the results show that AMPR has the ability to observe aerosol in typical region.

Field of view (FOV) is the basic parameter of sun-photometer and also the key parameter for transfer calibration and inter-comparison of sun-photometers using an integrating sphere as light source in the laboratory. Obtaining high-precision FOV is important to improve the accuracy of sun-photometer calibration. Based on the matrix measurement method, a system using laser as a light source to measure the FOV of CE318 sun-photometer is developed, and then the FOV results of matrix method are compared with the transfer calibration method. The results indicate that the matrix measurement with laser has a FOV uncertainty of 0.4%～1.1%. Because of the movement during measurement process and divergence angle of sun, the FOV uncertainty based on matrix measurement with sun is about 1.3%～1.4% which is larger than the laser result. In addition, the more historical calibration records, the more accurate FOV can be obtained by using transfer calibration method by comparing with matrix approach with laser, which suggests that the transfer calibration method can obtain accurate FOV when historical records are enough.

Lidar can obtain three-dimensional aerosol information. In 2010, the Mie-scattering lidar was used to acquire the observation data for 15 days during the China Radiometric Calibration Site (CRCS2010) field experiment. Fernald inversion method was used to retrieve vertical profile of atmospheric aerosol extinction coefficient in this region. Its impacts on the radiometric calibration are analyzed. Observations results indicate that there is an aerosol layer of high concentration values from the near-surface layer to 2～4 km in Dunhuang area. The aircraft for radiometric calibration should fly above this altitude to avoid the effect of the high concentrations aerosol layer. On the basis of the aerosol profiles of MODTRAN(MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission) radiative transfer model and the measured aerosol profiles, the radiation simulation was carried out respectively. The results showed that, different degrees of differences existed among FY3A/MERSI, all visible-near infrared channels, whereas the blue channels (<500 nm) had 4%～5% of the radiation difference.

Sunphotometer is the most important observation instrument in global AERONET site, which supply a lot of observation data for obtaining time and space distributions of global aerosol. A kind of high accuracy calibration method against cryogenic radiometer is developed in laboratory, calibration coefficient of sun channel and sky diffuser channel can be obtained in the ambient condition of laboratory. The calibration principle and installation are introduced in detail, calibration curve of absolute spectral responsivity are obtained in major spectral channel, and measurement uncertainty is analysed. The result indicated that the uncertainty of calibration coefficient of sky diffuser channel is less than 0.8% and sun channel is less than 2.06%.

Channel-type polarization remote sensor is one of the most common instruments in polarization remote sensing, which can obtain spectral radiance, the degree of polarization, polarization azimuth angle and other multi-dimensional information of the target. The polarization calibration principle of the channel type polarization remote sensor is described. A new Stokes matrix is built according to the radiometry theory and matrix optics theory. The polarization calibration model from the spectral dimension is established and improved, calibration retrieval of the parameters is analyzed, and the corresponding calibration method is introduced. It could provide a reference for similar channel-type polarization remote sensor polarization calibration work.

Polarization detection system calibration presents great significance for atmospheric detection, and it is a necessary basis for high accuracy retrieval for atmospheric parameters based on polarimetric detection. A prototype of spaceborne atmospheric synchronous correction device was developed by Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (AIOFM), which is a kind of multi-spectral polarimetric detection device. With this instrument, multi-spectral polarization information was obtained, and the atmospheric parameters synchronized with remote sensing image by time and space was retrieved. The calibration processing for the device is essential to acquire accurate atmospheric parameters. According to the multi-channel polarization detection features of atmospheric correction device, the system calibration was designed. By spectral, radiometric and polarization calibration, the Muller matrix of detection systems were obtained, therefore the relationship between detected values of each channel DN and the Stokes parameters was established, which provided an important basis for the practical application of the device.