The strong economic growth in China in recent decades, together with meteorological factors, has resulted in serious air pollution problems, in particular over large industrialized areas with high population density. To reduce the concentrations of pollutants, air pollution control policies have been successfully implemented, resulting in the gradual decrease of air pollution in China during the last decade, as evidenced from both satellite and ground-based measurements. The aims of the Dragon 4 project “Air quality over China” were the determination of trends in the concentrations of aerosols and trace gases, quantification of emissions using a top-down approach and gain a better understanding of the sources, transport and underlying processes contributing to air pollution. This was achieved through (a) satellite observations of trace gases and aerosols to study the temporal and spatial variability of air pollutants; (b) derivation of trace gas emissions from satellite observations to study sources of air pollution and improve air quality modeling; and (c) study effects of haze on air quality. In these studies, the satellite observations are complemented with ground-based observations and modeling.

When construction materials are exposed to the atmospheric environment, they are subject to deterioration, which varies according to the time period of exposure and the location. A tool named Dose–Response Functions (DRFs) has been developed to estimate this deterioration. DRFs use specific air pollutants and climatic parameters as input data. Existing DRFs in the literature use only ground-based measurements as input data. This fact constitutes a limitation for the application of this tool because it is too expensive to establish and maintain such a large network of ground-based stations for pollution monitoring. In this study, we present the development of new DRFs using only satellite data as an input named Satellite Sensed Data Dose-Response Functions (SSD-DRFs). Due to the global coverage provided by satellites, this new tool for monitoring the corrosion/soiling of materials overcomes the previous limitation because it can be applied to any area of interest. To develop SSD-DRFs, we used measurements from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder) on board Aqua and OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) on Aura. According to the obtained results, SSD-DRFs were developed for the case of carbon steel, zinc, limestone and modern glass materials. SSD-DRFs are shown to produce more reliable corrosion/soiling estimates than “traditional” DRFs using ground-based data. Furthermore, research into the development of the SSD-DRFs revealed that the different corrosion mechanisms taking place on the surface of a material do not act additively with each other but rather synergistically.