Aerosol retrieval in hazy atmosphere by using polarization and radiance

Abstract:

Aerosol retrieval is achieved by radiative transfer simulation in the Earth atmosphere model. This work intends to propose an algorithm for multiple light scattering simulations in the hazy polarized radiation field.  

We have already solved the scalar radiative transfer problem in the case of haze episodes with dense concentrations of atmospheric aerosols by the method of successive order of scattering, which is named scalar-MSOS. The term “scalar” indicates radiance alone in the treatment of radiative transfer problem against “vector” involving polarized radiation field.

The satellite polarimetric sensor POLDER-1, 2, 3 has shown that the spectro-photopolarimetry of terrestrial atmosphere is very useful for observation of the Earth, especially for aerosols. JAXA has been developing the new Earth observing system, GCOM satellite. GCOM-C will board the polarimetric sensor SGLI in 2017. It is highly likely that large-scale aerosol episodes will continue to occur, because the air pollution becomes to be severe due to both the increasing emissions of the anthropogenic aerosols and the complicated behavior of natural aerosols. Then many potential applications for the kind of radiation simulation by MSOS considering the polarization information denoted by Stokes parameters (I, Q, U, V), named vector-MSOS, are desired.

It is shown here that dense aerosol episodes can be well simulated by a semi-infinite radiation model composed of the proposed aerosol models. In addition our vector-MSOS is examined in practice by combination use of PARASOL/POLDER, GOSAT/CAI and Aqua/MODIS data.