First results of the XBAER aerosol optical depth

First results of the XBAER aerosol optical depth algorithm with EnMAP data

New high-resolution satellite instruments can measure aerosol optical depth (AOD) with a spatial accuracy of a few tens of meters, but the retrieval tools must first be adapted for this purpose. AOD is a good indicator of the amount of aerosols in the region under investigation. The AOD evaluation algorithm called XBAER has so far been developed for data from specific instruments. Typically, AOD has been evaluated for areas of several kilometers. This study investigated how the data from the hyperspectral imager (HSI) on the EnMAP satellite compares to previous data, as XBAER will later be adapted to use the 30-meter resolution of the HSI.

An initial trial with the high-resolution HSI data was conducted. Smoke clouds from biomass burning were detected in an image and compared with existing measurement data from AERONET. The correlation was moderate, with R = 0.631.

Future adjustments to the XBAER algorithm could further improve accuracy when using high-resolution HSI data.

Laffoy, S., Vountas, M., Mei, L., and Bösch, H.: First results of the XBAER aerosol optical depth algorithm with EnMAP data, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1282, 2025.