Journal of Remote Sensing established a "Haze: Remote Sensing" Column in partnership with RADI State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing. The special issue has been published online (http://www.jors.cn) in the 4th issue of 2013.

The “Haze: Remote Sensing” column of this issue contains nine papers that focus on the serious haze pollution in Beijing in January 2013. The papers introduced remote sensing instruments such as the sun-sky radiometer, laser radar and space borne multi-band CCD camera, and analyzed the haze aerosol properties obtained using ground-space, active-passive and other remote sensing methods.

The papers also reported the remote sensing monitoring results of Beijing haze. Comparing with ground monitoring stations, remote sensing monitoring not only can cover the regions that are beyond the monitoring scope of ground stations, but also can provide important haze parameters such as distribution, area, level, frequency, which has greatly enriched and improved the indicator system of the present ground monitoring stations.

This Column aims to promote the application of remote sensing technology in studying global climate change and in environmental monitoring, so as to enhance China’s capability of forecasting and responding to regional pollution problems. Journal of Remote Sensing will closely follow the developments in remote sensing monitoring, and continuously publish related researches results.