Improving In Situ Absorption Measurement Uncertainties for Ocean Color Remote Sensing Validation

Remote sensing has long been an invaluable tool for learning about the ocean environment and will continue to be increasingly important to the scientific community in the coming years with the deployment of next generation satellite imagers. Ocean color data collected from sensors in orbit and ocean color data products must be validated through field work, and in-water optical data is also essential for algorithm development. One of the ocean color properties most vital to remote sensing validation and algorithm development is absorption. While copious amounts of field data has been collected for this use, there is little community consensus on the most accurate way to process the data and quantify uncertainties. One of the largest uncertainties related to absorption measurements is the scattering error associated with reflective tube technology. While a few scattering error correction schemes are currently in use, they are known to still have large uncertainties. These schemes, including newly developed approaches, will be evaluated to fully characterize uncertainties and potential applicability. Additionally, other sources of uncertainties resulting from reflective tube instrument variations will be explored. Finally, newly available integrating cavity instrumentation will be evaluated and compared to existing reflective tube technology. The goal is to recommend a standard protocol for processing existing reflective tube absorption data and for collecting new data for future missions with optimal levels of uncertainty.