The Improvement of Infrared Brightness Temperature Difference Method for Detecting Yellow Sand Dust

The detection of yellow sand dust using satellite has been utilized from various bands from ultraviolet to infrared channels. Among them, Infrared channels have an advantage of detecting aerosols over high reflecting surface as well as during nighttime. Especially, brightness temperature difference between 11 and 12{\mu}m(BTD) was often used to distinguish between water cloud and yellow sand, because Ice and liquid water particles preferentially absorb longer wavelengths while aerosol particles preferentially absorb shorter wavelengths. We have found that the BTD significantly depends on surface temperature, emissivity, and zenith angle and thereby the threshold of BTD. In order to overcome these problems, we have constructed the background brightness temperature threshold of BTD and then subtracted it from BTD. Along with this, we utilized high temporal coverage of geostationary satellite, MTSAT-1R, to verify the reliability of the retrieved signal in conjunction with forecasted wind information. The statistical score test illustrated that this newly developed algorithm showed a promising result for detecting mineral dust by reducing the errors in the current BTD method.