Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Polarimetric Retrievals Of Surface And Cirrus Clouds Properties In The Region Affected By The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Matteo Ottaviani, Brian Cairns, Jacek Chowdhary, Bastiaan Van Diedenhoven, Kirk Knobelspiesse, Chris Hostetler, Rich Ferrare, Sharon Burton, John Hair, Michael D. Obland, Raymond Rogers

United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Publications

In 2010, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) performed several aerial surveys over the region affected by the oil spill caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore platform. The instrument was deployed on the NASA Langley B200 aircraft together with the High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL), which provides information on the distribution of the aerosol layers beneath the aircraft, including an accurate estimate of aerosol optical depth.

This work illustrates the merits of polarization measurements in detecting variations of ocean surface properties linked to the presence of an oil slick. In particular, we …

Iterative Atmospheric Correction Scheme And The Polarization Color Of Alpine Snow, Matteo Ottaviani, Brian Cairns, Rich Ferrare, Raymond Rogers

United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Publications

Characterization of the Earth’s surface is crucial to remote sensing, both to map geomorphological features and because subtracting this signal is essential during retrievals of the atmospheric constituents located between the surface and the sensor. Current operational algorithms model the surface total reflectance through a weighted linear combination of a few geometry-dependent kernels, each devised to describe a particular scattering mechanism. The information content of these measurements is overwhelmed by that of instruments with polarization capabilities: proposed models in this case are based on the Fresnel reflectance of an isotropic distribution of facets. Because of its remarkable lack of spectral …