The Detection of Yellow Sand Using MTSAT-1R Infrared bands

An algorithm for detection of yellow sand aerosols has been developed with infrared bands from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Multi-functional Transport Satellite-1 Replacement (MTSAT-1R) data. The algorithm is the hybrid algorithm that has used two methods combined together. The first method used the differential absorption in brightness temperature difference between $11{\mu}m$ and $12{\mu}m$ (BTD1). The radiation at 11 ${\mu}m$ is absorbed more than at 12 ${\mu}m$ when yellow sand is loaded in the atmosphere, whereas it will be the other way around when cloud is present. The second method uses the brightness temperature difference between $3.7{\mu}m$ and $11{\mu}m$ (BTD2). The technique would be most sensitive to dust loading during the day when the BTD2 is enhanced by reflection of $3.7{\mu}m$ solar radiation. We have applied the three methods to MTSAT-1R for derivation of the yellow sand dust and in conjunction with the Principle Component Analysis (PCA), a form of eigenvector statistical analysis. As produced Principle Component Image (PCI) through the PCA is the correlation between BTD1 and BTD2, errors of about 10% that have a low correlation are eliminated for aerosol detection. For the region of aerosol detection, aerosol index (AI) is produced to the scale of BTD1 and BTD2 values over land and ocean respectively. AI shows better results for yellow sand detection in comparison with the results from individual method. The comparison between AI and OMI aerosol index (AI) shows remarkable good correlations during daytime and relatively good correlations over the land.