Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a key driver of global climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution, the rapid rise in atmospheric CO₂ levels has significantly intensified global warming and climate-related issues. To accurately and promptly monitor changes in CO₂ concentrations and to support the development of climate policies, this study proposes a method based on random forest models to generate a continuous monthly dataset of CO₂ column concentration (XCO₂) across the entire Chinese region from 2004 to 2023. The study integrates XCO₂ satellite observations from SCIAMACHY, GOSAT, OCO-2, and GF-5B, alongside nighttime light remote sensing data, meteorological parameters, vegetation indices, and CO₂ profile data. Using the random forest algorithm, a complex relationship model was established between XCO₂ concentrations and various environmental variables. The goal of this model is to provide XCO₂ estimates with enhanced spatial coverage and accuracy. The XCO₂ concentrations predicted by the model show a high level of consistency with satellite observations, achieving a correlation coefficient (R-value) of 0.9959 and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.1631 ppm. This indicates that the model offers strong predictive accuracy and generalization ability. Additionally, ground-based validation further confirmed the model’s effectiveness, with a correlation coefficient (R-value) of 0.956 when compared with TCCON site observation data.

The Directional Polarimetric Camera (DPC) aboard the Chinese GaoFen-5 02 satellite is designed to monitor aerosols and particulate matter (PM). In this study, we retrieved the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over the Jing–Jin–Ji (JJJ) region using multi-angle data from the DPC, employing a combination of dark dense vegetation (DDV) and multi-angle retrieval methods. The added value of our method included novel hybrid methodology and good practical performance. The retrieval process involves three main steps: (1) deriving AOD from DPC data collected at the nadir angle using linear parameters of land surface reflectance between the blue and red bands from the MOD09 surface product; (2) after performing atmospheric correction with the retrieved AOD, calculating the variance of the normalized reflectance at all observation angles; and (3) leveraging the calculated variance to obtain the final AOD values. AOD images over the JJJ region were successfully retrieved from DPC data collected between January and June 2022. To validate the retrieval method, we compared our results with aerosol products from the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) Beijing-RADI site, as well as aerosol data from MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the generalized retrieval of atmosphere and surface properties (GRASP)/models over the same site. In terms of validation metrics, the correlation coefficient (R²) and root mean square error (RMSE) indicated that our method achieved high accuracy, with an R² value greater than 0.9 and an RMSE below 0.1, closely aligning with the performance of GRASP.