A Study of the Spatial Distribution of Aerosol Optical Thickness in Rio de Janeiro

The Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (RJMR) has the second largest concentration of people, vehicles, industries and other air pollutant sources of Brazil, suffering from chronic air pollution problems. A high resolution (1×1 km) spatial distribution of aerosols over the RJMR was obtained based on reflectance measured by MODIS (Moderate Resolution Spectrometer) sensors, on board of EOS‐Terra platform, operated by NASA/GSFC. Aerosol optical thicknesses were retrieved from these measurements using the software SBDART (Santa Barbara DISORT Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Model) and an algorithm developed in a previous study.