Analyzing the Relationship Between Aerosol Optical Depth and GDP in China by Integrating MODIS and Nighttime Light Data

A considerable number of environmental pollution problems has emerged due to the extensive and unreasonable GDP growth, especially in the atmosphere, which has become a universal environmental issue. Data released by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2016 showed that almost all emissions in China related to atmospheric pollutants were ranked first in the world. As one of the components of the atmosphere, aerosol is an important factor in assessing the degree of atmospheric pollution. The Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is a key parameter to characterize the aerosol effect. The objective of this study was to estimate the impact of GDP growth on aerosol distribution quantificationally from 2006 to 2016 that integrated MODIS aerosol products and nighttime light data through barycentre theory and Geographical Weighted Regression (GWR) model. The results of this study showed that: (1) that the degree of spatial coupling between the barycenter of AOD and GDP was high. Both barycenters were located in the province of Henan, and the longitude shows a consistent pattern of movement; (2) There were two clearly symmetrical “U” distributions in the region where R 2 >0.6, and the northeast-southwestern distributions (0.4 2 <0.5) were distributed between the two “U” types. (3) the GWR model explained the local correlation in the region of 91.36%-92.63 %. This paper first plotted the spatial distribution of the correlation between GDP and AOD, and proved that the spatial distribution of AOD was closely related with GDP. Our findings do not only provide the deeply understanding the impact of economic development on the atmospheric environment but would also has significant implications for coordinating regional economic development, air pollution control and the formulation of national economic plans.