Spatial Gap-filling of GK-2A/AMI Hourly AOD Products Using Meteorological Data and Machine Learning

Since aerosols adversely affect human health, such as deteriorating air quality, quantitative observation of the distribution and characteristics of aerosols is essential. Recently, satellite-based Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data is used in various studies as periodic and quantitative information acquisition means on the global scale, but optical sensor-based satellite AOD images are missing in some areas with cloud conditions. In this study, we produced gap-free GeoKompsat 2A (GK-2A) Advanced Meteorological Imager (AMI) AOD hourly images after generating a Random Forest based gap-filling model using grid meteorological and geographic elements as input variables. The accuracy of the model is Mean Bias Error (MBE) of -0.002 and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.145, which is higher than the target accuracy of the original data and considering that the target object is an atmospheric variable with Correlation Coefficient (CC) of 0.714, it is a model with sufficient explanatory power. The high temporal resolution of geostationary satellites is suitable for diurnal variation observation and is an important model for other research such as input for atmospheric correction, estimation of ground PM, analysis of small fires or pollutants.