{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,3]],"date-time":"2026-06-03T13:03:27Z","timestamp":1780491807596,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":44,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,9]],"date-time":"2022-02-09T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1644364800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100010225","name":"National Outstanding Youth Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["41925019"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["41925019"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100010225","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["42175147"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["42175147"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["42101365"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["42101365"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science","award":["OFSLRSS202008"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["OFSLRSS202008"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) is widely used as an advanced model dataset for the understanding of global climate change. However, independent validation and comparison of MERRA-2 are both insufficient and always desired. Therefore, in this study, the quantitative evaluation of MERRA-2 aerosol products was conducted over China for Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), Angstrom exponent (AE), absorbing AOD (AAOD) and chemical components (black carbon (BC) and dust (DU)) using Sun sky radiometer Observation NETwork (SONET) ground-based measurements and POLDER-3\/PARASOL satellite products generated by the GRASP algorithm. The available MERRA-2 monthly dataset and PARASOL\/GRASP monthly and seasonal products were intercompared over China. MERRA-2 AOD (550 nm) show general good agreement with SONET and PARASOL\/GRASP. For example, the correlation coefficients are usually 0.6\u20130.85 with SONET and 0.75\u20130.85 with PARASOL\/GRASP, the bias is usually \u22120.293 to +0.008 with SONET. For AE and AAOD, the agreement is still reasonable. MERRA-2 is found to overestimate fine mode AE and to display a general underestimation of aerosol absorption over China. In addition, MERRA-2 BC and DU mass concentrations show spatial and quantitative consistency with PARASOL\/GRASP components climatological products. The relatively high columnar BC mass concentration is observed around 1.5\u20132 mg\/m3 over the East China industrial region and high DU mass concentration is around 150 mg\/m3 near Taklimakan desert. MERRA-2 shows slightly higher BC and lower DU concentration than PARASOL\/GRASP over East China. The evaluations with in situ BC measurements near surface verify the overestimation (MAE = +0.44 \u00b5g\/m2) of MERRA-2 and underestimation (MAE = \u22120.38 \u00b5g\/m2) of PARASOL\/GRASP. The analysis demonstrates multi-source datasets, such as ground-based, space-borne remote sensing, in situ measurements, model simulation as well as reanalysis data, complement each other and can be used to refine aerosol characterization.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs14040821","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,9]],"date-time":"2022-02-09T21:26:48Z","timestamp":1644442008000},"page":"821","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":44,"title":["Evaluation of MERRA-2 Aerosol Optical and Component Properties over China Using SONET and PARASOL\/GRASP Data"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2730-9633","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yang","family":"Ou","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7795-3630","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zhengqiang","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7768-9542","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Cheng","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"GRASP-SAS, Remote Sensing Developments, Cite Scientifique, University Lille, 59655 Villeneuve d\u2019Ascq, France"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5856-1052","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ying","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2610-0064","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Kaitao","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zheng","family":"Shi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9877-3743","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jiantao","family":"Dong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hua","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zongren","family":"Peng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yisong","family":"Xie","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9797-4298","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jie","family":"Luo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"218","DOI":"10.1038\/nature13774","article-title":"High secondary aerosol contribution to particulate pollution during haze events in China","volume":"514","author":"Huang","year":"2014","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"ref_2","first-page":"335","article-title":"Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon","volume":"36","author":"Ramanathan","year":"2008","journal-title":"Nat. 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