Journal article
Improving Remote Sensing of Aerosol Microphysical Properties by Near‐Infrared Polarimetric Measurements Over Vegetated Land: Information Content Analysis
Journal of geophysical research. Atmospheres, Vol.123(4), pp.2215-2243
02/27/2018
DOI: 10.1002/2017JD027388
Abstract
While polarimetric measurements contain valuable information regarding aerosol microphysical properties, polarization data in the near‐infrared (NIR) bands have not been widely utilized. This paper evaluates whether the aerosol property information contents from single‐viewing satellite polarimetric measurements at 1,610 and 2,250 nm can be used to improve the retrieval of aerosol parameters over vegetated land, in combination with shorter‐wavelength bands (490, 670, and 870 nm). The a priori information and errors for the analysis are derived by assuming that the surface reflectance at visible wavelengths can be derived from the top of atmosphere at 2,250 nm. The information content in the synthetic data set is investigated for 10 aerosol parameters characterizing the columnar aerosol volumes (
V0f and
V0c), particle size distributions (
refff,
vefff,
reffc, and
veffc), and refractive indices (
mrf,
mif,
mrc, and
mic) for the fine‐ and coarse‐mode aerosol models, respectively, and one parameter C characterizing the surface polarization. The results indicate that the degrees of freedom for signal can be increased by at least 2 with the addition of NIR measurements and that one to three additional parameters could be further retrieved with significantly decreased uncertainties. In addition, the 1,610 nm band is necessary for the simultaneous retrieval of
V0f,
mrf, and
refff for the fine mode dominated aerosols, while the 1,610 and 2,250 nm bands are both indispensable for retrieving
V0f,
V0c,
mrc,
refff, and
reffc in tandem for the coarse mode dominated aerosols. The analysis also reveals that C could be further retrieved by including scalar radiance and that measurement errors have significantly larger influences on the retrieval uncertainties than model errors.
Key Points
Synthetic simulations of satellite multispectral and multiangular polarimetric measurements simultaneous with BRDF and BPDF models
The degrees of freedom for signal can be increased by at least 2 with the addition of NIR polarimetric measurements for aerosol retrieval
One to three additional microphysical parameters could be further retrieved with significantly decreased uncertainties by adding NIR measurements
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Improving Remote Sensing of Aerosol Microphysical Properties by Near‐Infrared Polarimetric Measurements Over Vegetated Land: Information Content Analysis
- Creators
- Weizhen Hou - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of SciencesZhengqiang Li - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of SciencesJun Wang - University of IowaXiaoguang Xu - University of IowaPhilippe Goloub - Laboratoire d'Optique AtmosphériqueLili Qie - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of geophysical research. Atmospheres, Vol.123(4), pp.2215-2243
- DOI
- 10.1002/2017JD027388
- ISSN
- 2169-897X
- eISSN
- 2169-8996
- Number of pages
- 29
- Grant note
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (41505022; 41671367; 41601383) Instrument Developing Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (YZ201664) Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science (OFSLRSS201710)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 02/27/2018
- Academic Unit
- Electrical and Computer Engineering; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Iowa Technology Institute; Physics and Astronomy; Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
- Record Identifier
- 9984104809502771
Metrics
18 Record Views