A Review on Chinese Fengyun Meteorological Satellites in Atmosphere Composition Monitoring

Air pollution and climate change are two major global challenges that threaten sustainable development, and the tracking and mapping of atmospheric pollutants and greenhouse gases help to keep these two problems in check. Benefiting from its wide spatial-temporal coverage, satellite remote sensing is indispensable in the earth observation systems to provide measurements of atmospheric chemical species for decades.

Since 2008, when the Chinese second-generation polar-orbiting meteorological satellite Fengyun-3A(FY-3A) was launched, China has developed the capability to acquire the global atmospheric chemical components data from the space on daily basis. The three instruments aboard the FY-3A/3B/3C satellites, the Medium Resolution Spectral Imager (MERSI), Total Ozone Unit (TOU) and Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Sounder (SBUS), enable the retrieval of aerosol optical depth (AOD), ozone total column and ozone vertical profile. Together with the subsequently launched FY-3D, FY-3F and FY-3H, they have established a global atmospheric composition dataset over fifteen years. The Hyperspectral Infrared Atmospheric Sounder (HIRAS) carried by FY-3D, FY-3E, FY-3F, FY-3H has been successfully used to retrieve the vertical profile of ozone and other trace gases during both day and night. Meanwhile, the Greenhouse-gases Absorption Spectrometer (GAS) onboard FY-3D and FY-3H realizes global carbon dioxide (CO₂) monitoring. The Nadir-viewing and Limb-viewing Ozone Monitoring Suite (OMS-N and OMS-L) aboard FY-3F detect stratospheric and tropospheric trace gases with higher quality. The Advanced Geostationary Radiation Imager (AGRI), embarked on the new generation geostationary satellites FY-4A, FY-4B and FY-4C, realizes the continuous measurement of aerosols since 2016. In addition, the Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder (GIIRS), as the world’s first thermal infrared hyperspectral detector in geostationary orbit, is used to monitor trace gases with high temporal and spatial resolution, such as ozone, CO,NH₃, and HCOOH.