Modeling polarization of light from heavy aerosols over oceans
Abstract
Reflected solar radiation from the Earth's ocean-atmosphere system is polarized by earth surface and atmospheric molecules and particles [1]. If a non-polarimetric radiometric sensor is sensitive to polarization, then this can be a source of measurement errors in satellite remote sensing. To correct the errors due to this effect, the polarization state of the reflected solar light must be known. A study of the sensitivity of reflected solar radiation's polarization to heavy aerosols over oceans is done with the adding-doubling radiative-transfer model (ADRTM) [1]. We found that the polarization of light is sensitive to aerosol type when aerosol optical depth (AOD) is big. We also found that nonspherical aerosol particles can monotonically increase the backscatter polarization degree with the increase of AOD. This gives us a simple method to detect AOD over oceans. By comparing the angle of linear polarization (AOLP) of the heavy aerosol oceans from PARASOL data, models and both PARASOL and model results for cloudy oceans [2][3], we found PARASOL OC2 aerosol products have cloud contamination. This study shows that the CLARREO Pathfinder [4] polarization distribution model (PDM) may need including heavy aerosol cases.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.A12A..02S
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0319 Cloud optics;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0321 Cloud/radiation interaction;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0360 Radiation: transmission and scattering;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE