Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net 1680-7367 1680-7375 6 4 2006 10.5194/acpd-6-6299-2006 http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/6/6299/2006/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/6/6299/2006/acpd-6-6299-2006.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/6/6299/2006/acpd-6-6299-2006.pdf 6299 6316 2006-07-12 Characterization of aerosol pollution events in France using ground-based and POLDER-2 satellite data M. Kacenelenbogen J.-F. Léon I. Chiapello D. Tanré Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France We analyze the relationship between daily fine particle mass concentration (PM2.5) and columnar aerosol optical thickness derived from the Polarization and Directionality of Earth's Reflectances (POLDER) satellite sensor. The study is focused over France during the POLDER-2 lifetime between April and October 2003. We have first compared the POLDER derived aerosol optical thickness (AOT) with integrated volume size distribution derived from ground-based Sun Photometer observations. The good correlation (R=0.72) with sub-micron volume fraction indicates that POLDER derived AOT is sensitive to the fine aerosol mass concentration. Considering 1974 match-up data points over 28 fine particle monitoring sites, the POLDER-2 derived AOT is fairly well correlated with collocated PM2.5 measurements, with a correlation coefficient of 0.55. The correlation coefficient reaches a maximum of 0.80 for particular sites. We have analyzed the probability to find an appropriate air quality category (AQC) as defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from POLDER-2 AOT measurements. The probability can be up to 88.8% (±3.7%) for the "Good'' AQC and 89.1% (±3.6%) for the "Moderate'' AQC.