Remote sensing of aerosol and marine parameters in coastal environments: Exploring the advantage of using polarized radiative transfer simulations of the coupled atmosphere-water system to analyze ocean color measurements

Simultaneous retrieval of aerosol and surface properties by means of inverse techniques based on a coupled atmosphere-surface radiative transfer model (CRTM) and optimal estimation can yield a considerable improvement in retrieval accuracy based on radiances measured by MERIS, MODIS, and similar instruments compared with traditional methods. There are uniqueness problems associated with photometric remote sensing measurements (like MERIS/MODIS) that ignore polarization effects, and rely on measuring only the radiance. Use of polarization measurements is particularly important for absorbing aerosols over coastal waters as well as over bright targets such as snow-covered and bare sea ice, where it has proved difficult to retrieve aerosol single-scattering albedo from radiance-only spectrometers such as MERIS and MODIS. We use a vector radiative transfer model for the coupled atmosphere-surface system in conjunction with an optimal estimation/Levenberg-Marquardt method to quantify how polarization measurements can be used to overcome the uniqueness problems associated with radiance-only retrieval of aerosol parameters. However, this study also indicates that even for existing instruments like MERIS and MODIS and future instrument like OLCI, that measure radiance-only, use of a polarized CRTM as a forward model in the optimal estimation can lead to significant enhancement of retrieval capabilities, and facilitate simultaneous retrieval of absorbing aerosols and marine parameters in turbid coastal environments.