Abstract
Utilization of the two channel satellite infrared image was examined as a remote sensing method to determine the spatial distributions of atmospheric aerosols. In the analytical method presented in this paper, the image data of the difference in equivalent black body temperature Tbb observed by a two channel imager is used for the detection of aerosol areas. Theoretical calculations for the method show that the sign of the difference in Tbb for most types of aerosols is opposit to that for clouds and water vapor. The difference in Tbb for volcanic and oceanic aerosols are relatively large. This mothod is expected to be effective to distinguish the high concentration areas of aerosols from the optically thin clouds and irregular patterns of water vapor field as well as the variation of ground surface temperature. Applying this method to NOAA AVHRR data, the distributions of volcanic aerosols and that of forest fire aerosols were successfully determined.
