Inelastic scattering in coupled atmosphere and ocean systems
Abstract
Ocean color remote sensing provides a vital Earth observation data record, which is important for monitoring water quality and water resources, ecological forecasting, detecting and assessing harmful algal blooms, and many other applications. In order to develop accurate and efficient ocean color retrieval algorithms, it is first necessary to develop theoretical models that accurately simulate multiple scattering of light in coupled atmosphere and ocean systems (CAOS), which is referred to as radiative transfer. It has been a long-time practical strategy to ignore the polarization nature of light in radiative transfer for the sake of efficiency, which leads to errors of 10% or more in situations where polarization effects are significant. In recent years, polarized radiative transfer models have gradually become the main stream in the atmospheric radiative transfer community. However, there are only a few models for CAOS that account for polarization. In addition to elastic scattering, inelastic scattering is also important in ocean waters. The main inelastic scattering mechanisms include Raman scattering, fluorescence by dissolved organic matter (FDOM), and chlorophyll fluorescence. Each mechanism has a unique impact on the spectral distribution of upwelling radiance exiting the water column. In this presentation we will report a radiative transfer model based on the successive order of scattering method, which uniquely combines all major features without approximation: polarization, coupling between atmosphere and ocean, and inelastic scattering in ocean waters. The impacts of fluorescence to the polarization of the radiation field will also be presented. This model provides a unique capability of studying the sensitivity of the radiance at the top of the atmosphere in responses to different components in the CAOS, which is important for developing new retrieval algorithms for current and future ocean color satellite missions, for example, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) that will provide unprecedented spatial and spectral coverages of the global oceans.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.A22C..07Z
- Keywords:
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- 3311 Clouds and aerosols;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3359 Radiative processes;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3360 Remote sensing;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3367 Theoretical modeling;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES