Improvement of satellite derived pollution maps with the use of a geostatistical interpolation method

The small number of ground stations for the assessment of the spatial distribution of air pollutants motivates the search for methods that make use of satellite images. One such method, known as Differential Texture Analysis (DTA), is used to measure the Aerosol Optical Thickness in the Visible (AOTV), which correlates highly with air quality. With this method, the presence of clouds and/or land cover changes produce patches of missing values. In this paper we demonstrate that universal kriging can be used to obtain reasonable estimates for these missing values. The methodology was applied to a satellite derived AOTV map of the city of Brescia (Italy).