Satellite remote sensing of nonspherical tropospheric aerosols

Michael I. Mishchenko; Larry D. Travis; Andrew A. Lacis; Barbara E. Carlson

doi:10.1117/12.198572

4 January 1995 Satellite remote sensing of nonspherical tropospheric aerosols

Michael I. Mishchenko, Larry D. Travis, Andrew A. Lacis, Barbara E. Carlson

Proceedings Volume 2311, Atmospheric Sensing and Modelling; (1995) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.198572
Event: Satellite Remote Sensing, 1994, Rome, Italy

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the possible effect of nonsphericity of solid tropospheric aerosols on the accuracy of aerosol thickness retrievals from reflectance measurements over the ocean surface. To model light-scattering properties of nonspherical aerosols, we use a shape mixture of moderately aspherical, randomly oriented polydisperse spheroids. We assume that the size distribution and refractive index of aerosols are known and use the aerosol optical thickness 0.2 to computer the reflectivity for an atmosphere-ocean model similar to that used in the AVHRR aerosol retrieval algorithms. We then use analogous computations for volume- equivalent spherical aerosols with varying optical thickness to invert the simulated nonspherical reflectance. Our computations demonstrate that the use of the spherical model to retrieve the optical thickness of actually nonspherical aerosols can result in errors which, depending on the scattering geometry, can well exceed 100%.

Citation Download Citation

Michael I. Mishchenko, Larry D. Travis, Andrew A. Lacis, and Barbara E. Carlson "Satellite remote sensing of nonspherical tropospheric aerosols", Proc. SPIE 2311, Atmospheric Sensing and Modelling, (4 January 1995); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.198572

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