The direct correlation between NASA MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD) products and the air pollution index (API) in Beijing was found relatively low based on the long-term comparison analysis. The correlation improved to some extent after taking account of the seasonal variation of scale height and the vertical distribution of aerosols. The correlation coefficient further improved significantly after considering the influencing factor of Relative Humidity (RH). This study concluded that satellite remote-sensing could serve as an efficient tool for monitoring the spatial distribution of particulate pollutants on the ground-level, as long as corrections have been made in the two aforementioned processes. Taking advantage of the MODIS information, we analyzed a pollution episode occurring in October 2004 in Beijing. It indicated that satellite remote-sensing could describe the formation process of the ground-level pollution episode in detail, and showed that regional transport and the topography were crucial factors to air quality in Beijing. The annual averaged distribution in the urban area of Beijing and its surroundings could be also obtained from the high-resolution retrieval results, implicating that high-resolution satellite remote-sensing might be potential in monitoring the source distribution of particulate pollutants.
