OPTIMAL INTERPOLATION OF AERONET RADIOMETRIC NETWORK OBSERVATIONS FOR THE EVALUATION OF THE AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH DISTRIBUTION IN THE EASTERN EUROPEAN REGION

Abstract

The application of the optimal interpolation method for the assimilation of the observational data of aerosol optical thickness (AOT), which are sparse in space and time, in the chemical transport model is herein validated. Assuming the negligible error of AOT observations in the AERONET ground-based radiometric network, spatial and temporal correlation functions of the errors in the results of the AOT simulated by the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model are obtained. The optimal interpolation method is applied to the AERONET data using the GEOS-Chem results as a background field for the Eastern European region for 2015–2016. It is shown that the use of the optimal interpolation method permits to reduce the root-mean-square error of the AOT estimation by more than a third in places where there are no AERONET stations in comparison with the model results.