Estimation of spatiotemporal PM1.0 distributions in China by combining PM2.5 observations with satellite aerosol optical depth
Graphical abstract
Introduction
As the major components of aerosols, particulate matter (PM) exert remarkable impacts on the climate system through their direct and indirect effects (Qin et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2015). The report of IPCC5 indicates that, the impact of aerosol–cloud interaction on climate remains the most uncertain factor in global radiation changes (IPCC, 2013). Many studies on aerosol climatic effects have been conducted (Charlson et al., 1992; Pan et al., 2017; Lu et al., 2018; Mao et al., 2018). Large amounts of particle emissions seriously reduce atmospheric visibility and affect daily traffic. Moreover, particles smaller than 10 μm are inhalable by humans and threaten human health (Bartell et al., 2013; Kulshrestha, 2018).
Studies on the regional spatiotemporal evolution of PM with different diameters acquired through station measurements have indicated that fine particles, especially PM1.0, are the major contributor to air pollution (Shi et al., 2014; Zhuang et al., 2014). Statistically, PM1.0 accounts for more than 80% of the average PM2.5 and even reaches 98% in several regions of China (Li et al., 2015). PM1.0 data is more useful than PM2.5 data in assessing anthropogenic emissions. Morawska et al. (2008) investigated the size distribution of ambient particles and found that PM1.0 enables improved distinction between combustion and mechanically generated aerosols. Furthermore, the health hazards of PM increase with the decrease in particulate diameter (Huang et al., 2003; Elder et al., 2015) because fine particles contain considerable harmful substances and could enter the respiratory system, especially the alveoli, deeply, thereby causing serious threats to humans (Zhang et al., 2016).
Given the strong associations of PM1.0 with public health and the environment, large amounts of exposure data should be obtained to strengthen particle pollution control. However, PM1.0 monitoring stations are sparse and unevenly distributed, especially in sparsely populated western parts of China; this feature is not conducive for conducting continuous spatiotemporal monitoring of ultrafine particulates. Advanced satellite remote sensing with wide observation horizons can effectively compensate for limitations in ground measurements (Guo et al., 2009). Studies have demonstrated that aerosol extinction is closely related to particles with diameters between 0.4 and 1.0 μm (Madronich and Flocke, 1999). Therefore, satellite-derived aerosol optical depth (AOD), which is the column integral of aerosol's extinction coefficient, could be a useful tool for mapping PM1.0 distributions in theory. Current studies on PM1.0 estimation with satellite remote sensing are only in the exploratory stage. Chen et al. (2018) investigated PM1.0 estimation on the basis of moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) AOD in China and obtained 59% variability for daily estimations. Qin et al. (2018) estimated PM1.0 concentrations from MODIS over Yangtze River Delta, China, by using a geographically and temporally weighted regression model with R2 of 0.74 for daily estimations. However, hourly PM1.0 concentration with high spatial coverage is needed when evaluating a diurnal transport and control approach of air pollution. As a geostationary satellite, Himawari-8 provides an unprecedented opportunity. Our previous work (Zang et al., 2018) showed that the limited number of PM1.0 sites and insufficient ground-based observations cannot effectively constrain the estimated results of PM1.0 (R2 of 0.65), and model accuracy needs further improvement.
In this study, considering the high correlation between PM1.0 and PM2.5 and large amount of available observation data on PM2.5, we estimated PM1.0 by combining ground-based PM2.5 measurements with hourly satellite aerosol retrievals in China into an improved generalised regression neural network (GRNN) model (hybrid GRNN model with the principal component analysis [PCA] method, namely, PCA–integrated GRNN model). We designed three groups of comparative experiments, which consisted of multiple linear regression (MLR), GRNN and PCA-integrated GRNN models with or without PM2.5 observations. We compared the tenfold cross-validation (CV) results of these models by fusing particle observations to evaluate the improvement in each model. In addition, we estimated hourly PM1.0 concentrations by using a well-trained model and depicted the spatial distribution of annual and seasonal averages of PM1.0. The error sources of estimates were discussed and analysed for future improvements of the proposed method.
Section snippets
Datasets
The datasets employed in the PM1.0 estimation are summarised in Table 1.
Evaluation of model performance
Table 2 summarises the PM1.0 estimation performance of each model from three groups of comparative experiments. Comparisons of the first and second experimental groups indicated that the nonlinear ANN model could better learn the potential relationship between PM1.0 and its predictors, and its estimation accuracy was improved by nearly twice. Specifically, the values of R2, RMSE and MAE of the MLR model without PM2.5 observations were 0.21, 33.3 μg/m3 and 23.0 μg/m3, respectively, whereas the
Conclusions
Fine PM poses a greater health risk than coarse particulates (PM10) (Oberdörster et al., 2005), and the extinction coefficient increases with the increase in PM1.0 fraction (Sabbagh-Kupelwieser, 2010). Despite the abundance of studies on PM2.5 and PM10 estimations from satellite remote sensing, only a few studies have been conducted on PM1.0 by using satellite observations. In this study, we estimated hourly PM1.0 concentrations in China by using a PCA–integrated GRNN model that combines
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant numbers 2017YFC0212600, 2016YFC0200900 and 2017YFC1501401) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 41701381 and 41627804). The authors are also grateful to CMA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, ECMWF, Data Center of the US NASA, and USGS for providing the datasets used in this work.
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