Merging of aerosol optical depth data from multiple remote sensing sensors

In this paper, a geostatistical approach was used to merge monthly level 3 aerosol optical depth (AOD) data from multiple remote sensing satellite sensors and ground based observation data set. MODIS and MISR AOD data along with Kanpur ground station AOD data were merged to form a spatio-temporal monthly AOD data set from January 2003 to December 2011 in the norther Indian region. To measure the accuracy of merged data set, mean square error of satellite data sets and merged data set were calculated. Mean square error of the merged data set was found lower than that of satellite data. MISR and SeaWiFs AOD data for April and June 2009 were also merged with ground station data sets. It was noted that when more number of ground based stations were included in merging procedure, accuracy of the merged data set increased.