Aerosol remote sensing from POLDER/ADEOS over the ocean: Improved retrieval using a nonspherical particle model

Abstract

The properties of the aerosols over the ocean are re‐investigated by using the observations of the Polarization and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectance (POLDER) wide field of view imaging spectroradiometer developed by the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and operated aboard the Japanese heliosynchronous Advanced Earth Observation Satellite (ADEOS) platform from 30 October 1996 to 30 June 1997. The measurement analysis leads us to assume that aerosols consist of particles with a bimodal size distributions, in which the large particle mode generally consists of nonspherical particles. In all observations where there is evidence for the occurrence of nonspherical particles from the spectral, directional, and polarization characteristics of the solar radiation scattered by the aerosols, the average aerosol scattering matrix for irregular particles derived recently by Volten et al. (2001) from laboratory measurements proves to provide a very efficient model of these particles.