Polarized observations for advanced atmosphere-ocean algorithms using airborne multi-spectral hyper-angular polarimetric imager

Airborne measurements of the linear polarization state of light were carried out over coastal and open ocean conditions to study aerosol and water column properties and investigate the possibility of using a multi-spectral, hyper-angular imaging polarimeter for retrieving aerosol and hydrosol optical properties. The instrument, the Versatile Imager for the Coastal Ocean (VICO), is used to support the analysis of ocean color polarized observations and their implication for future space-borne polarimetry such as the polarimeters planned to be deployed with the NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission. Several sets of images at different viewing angles from the visible to the near-infrared spectrum were collected and compared with simulations using a vector radiative transfer (VRT) code. The simulations were obtained based on measured seawater inherent optical properties from shipborne instruments and measured atmospheric parameters from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) and a shipborne sunphotometer at different locations. An uncertainty method has been derived by propagating uncertainties from the measured polarized radiances. The method demonstrates practicable uncertainty formulations that can be used to construct a measurement uncertainty budget for the polarized data products. Results from VICO and the VRT simulation are consistent for both radiance and polarization spectrum at all the measured viewing angles. The total and polarized water-leaving reflectances are retrieved at four bands and varied geometries. It is also shown that the polarized remote sensing reflectance measured at various angles could be used to distinguish between the aerosols’ and hydrosols’ optical signatures by exploiting the fact that the polarized reflectance is fairly insensitive to hydrosols for given acquisition geometries. This study thus provides an opportunity to investigate various relationships between the microphysical properties of the oceanic and atmospheric particulates such as refractive index and particle size properties. It also contributes to the development of polarization-based inverse ocean color algorithms. Finally, the provided analysis gives insights for the validation of the ocean color parameters that will be retrieved from the forthcoming polarimetric satellite missions.