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This paper describes a neural network cloud masking scheme from PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar) multi-angle polarimetric measurements. The algorithm has been trained on synthetic measurements and has been applied to the processing of 1 year of PARASOL data. Comparisons of the retrieved cloud fraction with MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) products show overall agreement in spatial and temporal patterns, but the PARASOL neural network (PARASOL-NN) retrieves lower cloud fractions. Comparisons with a goodness-of-fit mask from aerosol retrievals suggest that the NN cloud mask flags fewer clear pixels as cloudy than MODIS (∼ 3 % of the clear pixels versus ∼ 15 % by MODIS). On the other hand the NN classifies more pixels incorrectly as clear than MODIS (∼ 20 % by NN, versus ∼ 15 % by MODIS). Additionally, the NN and MODIS cloud mask have been applied to the aerosol retrievals from PARASOL using the Remote Sensing of Trace Gas and Aerosol Products (RemoTAP) algorithm. Validation with AERONET shows that the NN cloud mask performs comparably with MODIS in screening residual cloud contamination in retrieved aerosol properties. Our study demonstrates that cloud masking from multi-angle polarimeter (MAP) aerosol retrievals can be performed based on the MAP measurements themselves, making the retrievals independent of the availability of a cloud imager. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a passive satellite remote sensing point of view, the richest set of information on aerosol properties can be obtained from instruments that measure both intensity and polarization of backscattered sunlight at multiple wavelengths and multiple viewing angles for one ground pixel. However, it is challenging to exploit this information at a global scale because complex algorithms are needed with many fit parameters (aerosol and land/ocean reflection), based on online radiative transfer models. So far, two such algorithms have demonstrated this capability at a global scale: the Generalized Retrieval of Atmosphere and Surface Properties (GRASP) algorithm and the Remote sensing of Trace gas and Aerosol Products (RemoTAP) algorithm. In this paper, we present a detailed comparison of the most recent versions of RemoTAP and GRASP. We evaluate both algorithms for synthetic observations, for real PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar) observations against AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) for common pixels, and for global PARASOL retrievals for the year 2008. For the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over land, both algorithms show a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.10 (at 550 nm). For single scattering albedo (SSA), both algorithms show a good performance in terms of RMSE (0.04), but RemoTAP has a smaller bias (0.002) compared to GRASP (0.021). For the Ångström exponent (AE), GRASP has a smaller RMSE (0.367) than RemoTAP (0.387), mainly caused by a small overestimate of AE at low values (large particles). Over ocean both algorithms perform very well. For AOD, RemoTAP has an RMSE of 0.057 and GRASP an even smaller RMSE of 0.047. For AE, the RMSEs of RemoTAP and GRASP are 0.285 and 0.224, respectively. Based on the AERONET comparison, we conclude that both algorithms show very similar overall performance, where both algorithms have stronger and weaker points. For the global data products, we find a root mean square difference (RMSD) between RemoTAP and GRASP AOD of 0.12 and 0.038 over land and ocean, respectively. The largest differences occur over the biomass burning region in equatorial Africa. The global mean values are virtually unbiased with respect to each other. For AE the RMSD between RemoTAP and GRASP is 0.33 over land and 0.23 over ocean. For SSA, we find much better agreement over land (bias = - 0.01, RMSD = 0.043 for retrievals with AOD > 0.2) than over ocean (bias = 0.053, RMSD = 0.074). As expected, the differences increase towards low AOD, over both land and ocean. We also compared the GRASP and RemoTAP AOD and AE products against MODIS. For AOD over land, the agreement of either GRASP or RemoTAP with MODIS is worse than the agreement between the two PARASOL algorithms themselves. Over ocean, the agreement is very similar among the three products for AOD. For AE, the agreement between GRASP and RemoTAP is much better than the agreement of both products with MODIS. The agreement of the latest product versions with each other and with AERONET improved significantly compared to the previous version of the global products of GRASP and RemoTAP. The results demonstrate that the dedicated effort in algorithm development for multi-angle polarimetric (MAP) aerosol retrievals still leads to substantial improvement of the resulting aerosol products, and this is still an ongoing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to conduct accurate aerosol retrieval over snow, the Remote Sensing of Trace Gases and Aerosol Products (RemoTAP) algorithm developed by SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research is extended with a bi-directional reflection distribution function (BRDF) for snow surfaces. The capability of the extended algorithm is validated with both synthetic measurements and real satellite measurements from the Polarization & Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Sciences coupled with Observations from a Lidar (PARASOL), and a comparison has been made to retrievals with the baseline RemoTAP (without a snow kernel). For retrievals with real PARASOL observations, we use pixels over Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) stations for validation and we use the MODIS snow cover products to identify pixels over snow. We evaluate the retrieved aerosol optical thickness (AOT) at 550 nm (τ550) , single-scattering albedo (SSA) at 550 nm (ω550) and Ångström exponent (AE) for 440–870 nm (AE440-870). The experiments with both synthetic and real data show that the extended RemoTAP maintains capability for snow-free pixels and has obvious advantages in accuracy and the fraction of successful retrievals for retrieval over snow, especially over surfaces with snow cover >75 %. According to the real-data experiment, we find that the retrieval algorithm has difficulty in fitting the PARASOL 1020 nm band, where snow reflectance is significantly lower than that for the visible bands. When we perform a four-band retrieval (490, 565, 670, 865 nm) with the extended RemoTAP, we obtain a good retrieval result for τ550 , ω550 and AE440-870. Therefore, the four-band retrieval with the extended RemoTAP is recommended for aerosol retrieval over snow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP2) will be on board NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, scheduled for launch in January 2024. In this study we systematically evaluate the retrievability and uncertainty of aerosol and ocean parameters from HARP2 multi-angle polarimeter (MAP) measurements. To reduce the computational demand of MAP-based retrievals and maximize data processing throughput, we developed improved neural network (NN) forward models for spaceborne HARP2 measurements over a coupled atmosphere and ocean system within the FastMAPOL retrieval algorithm. To this end, a cascading retrieval scheme is implemented in FastMAPOL, which leverages a series of NN models of varying size, speed, and accuracy to optimize performance. Two sets of NN models are used for reflectance and polarization, respectively. A full day of global synthetic HARP2 data was generated and used to test various retrieval parameters including aerosol microphysical and optical properties, aerosol layer height, ocean surface wind speed, and ocean chlorophyll a concentration. To assess retrieval quality, pixel-wise retrieval uncertainties were derived from error propagation and evaluated against the difference between the retrieval parameters and truth based on a Monte Carlo method. We found that the fine-mode aerosol properties can be retrieved well from the HARP2 data, though the coarse-mode aerosol properties are more uncertain. Larger uncertainties are associated with a reduced number of available viewing angles, which typically occur near the scan edge of the HARP2 instrument. Results of the performance assessment demonstrate that the algorithm is a viable approach for operational application to HARP2 data after the PACE launch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a top-down approach for aerosol emission estimation from Spectropolarimeter for Planetary Exploration (SPEXone) polarimetric retrievals related to the aerosol amount, size, and absorption using a fixed-lag ensemble Kalman smoother (LETKS) in combination with the ECHAM-HAM model. We assess the system by performing observing system simulation experiments (OSSEs) in order to evaluate the ability of the future multi-angle polarimeter instrument, SPEXone, as well as a satellite with near-perfect global coverage. In our OSSEs, the nature run (NAT) is a simulation by the global climate aerosol model ECHAM-HAM with altered aerosol emissions. The control (CTL) and the data assimilation (DAS) experiments are composed of an ensemble of ECHAM-HAM simulations, where the default aerosol emissions are perturbed with factors taken from a Gaussian distribution. Synthetic observations, specifically aerosol optical depth at 550 nm (AOD 550), Ångström exponent from 550 to 865 nm (AE 550–865), and single-scattering albedo at 550 nm (SSA 550) are assimilated in order to estimate the aerosol emission fluxes of desert dust (DU), sea salt (SS), organic carbon (OC), black carbon (BC), and sulfate (SO 4), along with the emission fluxes of two SO 4 precursor gases (SO 2 , DMS). The prior emission global relative mean absolute error (MAE) before the assimilation ranges from 33 % to 117 %. Depending on the species, the assimilated observations sampled using the satellite with near-perfect global coverage reduce this error to equal to or lower than 5 %. Despite its limited coverage, the SPEXone sampling shows similar results, with somewhat larger errors for DU and SS (both having a MAE equal to 11 %). Further, experiments show that doubling the measurement error increases the global relative MAE up to 22 % for DU and SS. In addition, our results reveal that when the wind of DAS uses a different reanalysis dataset (ERA5 instead of ERA-Interim) to the NAT, the estimated SS emissions are negatively affected the most, while other aerosol species are negatively affected to a smaller extent. If the DAS uses dust or sea salt emission parametrizations that are very different from the NAT, posterior emissions can still be successfully estimated, but this experiment revealed that the source location is important for the estimation of dust emissions. This work suggests that the upcoming SPEXone sensor will provide observations related to aerosol amount, size, and absorption with sufficient coverage and accuracy in order to estimate aerosol emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a top-down approach for aerosol emission estimation from SPEXone polarimetric retrievals related to the aerosol amount, size, and absorption using a fixed-lag ensemble Kalman smoother (LETKS) in combination with the ECHAM-HAM model. We assess the system by performing Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs), in order to evaluate the ability of the future multi-angle polarimeter instrument, SPEXone, as well as a satellite with near perfect global coverage. In our OSSEs, the Nature Run (NAT) is a simulation by the global climate aerosol model ECHAM-HAM with altered aerosol emissions. The Control (CTL) and the data assimilation (DAS) experiments are composed of an ensemble of ECHAM-HAM simulations, where the default aerosol emissions are perturbed with factors taken from a Gaussian distribution. Synthetic observations, specifically Aerosol Optical Depth at 550 nm (AOD550), Angstrom Exponent from 550 nm to 865 nm (AE550-865) and Single Scattering Albedo at 550 nm (SSA550) are assimilated in order to estimate the aerosol emission fluxes of desert dust (DU), sea salt (SS), organic carbon (OC), black carbon (BC) and sulphate (SO4), along with the emission fluxes of two SO4 precursor gases (SO2, DMS). The synthetic observations are sampled from the NAT according to two satellite observing systems, with different spatial coverages. The first is the sensor SPEXone, a hyperspectral multi-angle polarimeter with a narrow swath (~100 km), that will be a part of the NASA PACE mission. The second is an idealized sensor that can retrieve observations over the whole globe even under cloudy conditions. The prior emission global relative Mean Absolute Error (MAE) before the assimilation ranges from 33 % to 117 %. Depending on the species, the assimilated observations sampled using the idealized sensor, reduce this error to equal to or lower than 5 %. Despite its limited coverage, the SPEXone sampling bares similar results, with somewhat larger errors for DU and SS (both having a MAE equal to 11 %). Further, experiments show that doubling the measurement error, increases the global relative MAE to 22 % for DU and SS. The emission estimation of the other species is not affected as much by these changes. In addition, the role of biased meteorology on emission estimation was quantified by using two different datasets (ERA-5 and ERA-interim) to nudge the U and V wind components of the model. The results reveal that when the wind of DAS uses a different reanalysis dataset than the NAT the estimated SS emissions are negatively affected the most, while the estimated emissions of DU, OC, BC and SO2 are negatively affected to a smaller extent. If the DAS uses dust or sea salt emission parametrisations that are very different from the NAT, posterior emissions can still be successfully estimated but this experiment revealed that the source location is important for the estimation of dust emissions. This work suggests that the upcoming SPEXone sensor will provide observations related to aerosol amount, size and absorption with sufficient coverage and accuracy, in order to estimate aerosol emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an investigation of aerosol microphysical retrievals from high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) measurements. Firstly, retrievals are presented for synthetically generated lidar measurements, followed by an application of the retrieval algorithm to real lidar measurements. Here, we perform the investigation for an aerosol state vector that is typically used in multi-angle polarimeter (MAP) retrievals, so that the results can be interpreted in relation to a potential combination of lidar and MAP measurements. These state vectors correspond to a bimodal size distribution, where column number, effective radius, and effective variance of both modes are treated as fit parameters, alongside the complex refractive index and particle shape. The focus is primarily on a lidar configuration based on that of the High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2 (HSRL-2), which participated in the ACEPOL (Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar) campaign, a combined project between NASA and SRON (Netherlands Institute for Space Research). The measurement campaign took place between October and November 2017, over the western region of the USA. Six different instruments were mounted on the aeroplane: four MAPs and two lidar instruments, HSRL-2 and the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL). Most of the flights were carried out over land, passing over scenes with a low aerosol load. One of the flights passed over a prescribed forest fire in Arizona on 9 November, with a relatively higher aerosol optical depth (AOD), and it is the data from this flight that are focussed on in this study. A retrieval of the aerosol microphysical properties of the smoke plume mixture was attempted with the data from HSRL-2 and compared with a retrieval from the MAPs carried out in previous work pertaining to the ACEPOL data. The synthetic HSRL-2 retrievals resulted for the fine mode in a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.038 (0.025) µm for the effective radius (with a mean truth value of 0.195 µm), 0.052 (0.037) for the real refractive index, 0.010 (7.20×10-3) for the imaginary part of the refractive index, 0.109 (0.071) for the spherical fraction, and 0.054 (0.039) for the AOD at 532 nm, where the retrievals inside brackets indicate the MAE for noise-free retrievals. For the coarse mode, we find the MAE is 0.459 (0.254) µm for the effective radius (with a mean truth value of 1.970 µm), 0.085 (0.075) for the real refractive index, 2.06×10-4 (1.90×10-4) for the imaginary component, 0.120 (0.090) for the spherical fraction, and 0.051 (0.039) for the AOD. A study of the sensitivity of retrievals to the choice of prior and first guess showed that, on average, the retrieval errors increase when the prior deviates too much from the truth value. These experiments revealed that the measurements primarily contain information on the size and shape of the aerosol, along with the column number. Some information on the real component of the refractive index is also present, with the measurements providing little on absorption or on the effective variance of the aerosol distribution, as both of these were shown to depend heavily on the choice of prior. Retrievals using the HSRL-2 smoke-plume data yielded, for the fine mode, an effective radius of 0.107 µm , a real refractive index of 1.561, an imaginary component of refractive index of 0.010, a spherical fraction of 0.719, and an AOD at 532 nm of 0.505. Additionally, the single-scattering albedo (SSA) from the HSRL-2 retrievals was 0.940. Overall, these results are in good agreement with those from the Spectropolarimeter for Planetary Exploration (SPEX) and Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) retrievals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric aerosols have been known to be a major source of uncertainties in CO2 concentrations retrieved from space. In this study, we investigate the added value of multi-angle polarimeter (MAP) measurements in the context of the Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring (CO2M) mission. To this end, we compare aerosol-induced XCO2 errors from standard retrievals using a spectrometer only (without MAP) with those from retrievals using both MAP and a spectrometer. MAP observations are expected to provide information about aerosols that is useful for improving XCO2 accuracy. For the purpose of this work, we generate synthetic measurements for different atmospheric and geophysical scenes over land, based on which XCO2 retrieval errors are assessed. We show that the standard XCO2 retrieval approach that makes no use of auxiliary aerosol observations returns XCO2 errors with an overall bias of 1.12 ppm and a spread (defined as half of the 15.9–84.1 percentile range) of 2.07 ppm. The latter is far higher than the required XCO2 accuracy (0.5 ppm) and precision (0.7 ppm) of the CO2M mission. Moreover, these XCO2 errors exhibit a significantly larger bias and scatter at high aerosol optical depth, high aerosol altitude, and low solar zenith angle, which could lead to worse performance in retrieving XCO2 from polluted areas where CO2 and aerosols are co-emitted. We proceed to determine MAP instrument specifications in terms of wavelength range, number of viewing angles, and measurement uncertainties that are required to achieve XCO2 accuracy and precision targets of the mission. Two different MAP instrument concepts are considered in this analysis. We find that for either concept, MAP measurement uncertainties on radiance and degree of linear polarization should be no more than 3 % and 0.003, respectively. A retrieval exercise using MAP and spectrometer measurements of the synthetic scenes is carried out for each of the two MAP concepts. The resulting XCO2 errors have an overall bias of -0.004 ppm and a spread of 0.54 ppm for one concept, and a bias of 0.02 ppm and a spread of 0.52 ppm for the other concept. Both are compliant with the CO2M mission requirements; the very low bias is especially important for proper emission estimates. For the test ensemble, we find effectively no dependence of the XCO2 errors on aerosol optical depth, altitude of the aerosol layer, and solar zenith angle. These results indicate a major improvement in the retrieved XCO2 accuracy with respect to the standard retrieval approach, which could lead to a higher data yield, better global coverage, and a more comprehensive determination of CO2 sinks and sources. As such, this outcome underlines the contribution of, and therefore the need for, a MAP instrument aboard the CO2M mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, scheduled for launch in the time frame of late 2022 to early 2023, will carry the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), a hyperspectral scanning radiometer, and two multiangle polarimeters (MAPs), the UMBC Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter 2 (HARP2) and the SRON Spectro-Polarimeter for Planetary EXploration one (SPEXone). One purpose of the PACE MAPs is to better characterize aerosol properties, which can then be used to improve atmospheric correction for the retrieval of ocean color in coastal waters. Though this is theoretically promising, the use of MAP data in the atmospheric correction of colocated hyperspectral ocean color measurements have not yet been well demonstrated. In this work, we performed aerosol retrievals using the MAP measurements from the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) and demonstrate its application to the atmospheric correction of hyperspectral radiometric measurements from SPEX airborne. Both measurements were collected on the same aircraft from the Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar (ACEPOL) field campaign in 2017. Two cases over ocean with small aerosol loading (aerosol optical depth ∼0.04) are identified including colocated RSP and SPEX airborne measurements and Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) ground-based observations. The aerosol retrievals are performed and compared with two options: one uses reflectance measurement only and the other uses both reflectance and polarization. It is demonstrated that polarization information helps reduce the uncertainties of aerosol microphysical and optical properties. The retrieved aerosol properties are then used to compute the contribution of atmosphere and ocean surface for atmospheric correction over the discrete bands from RSP measurements and the hyperspectral SPEX airborne measurements. The water-leaving signals determined this way are compared with both AERONET and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) ocean color products for performance analysis. The results and lessons learned from this work will provide a basis to fully exploit the information from the unique combination of sensors on PACE for aerosol characterization and ocean ecosystem research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fall of 2017, an airborne field campaign was conducted from the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, to advance the remote sensing of aerosols and clouds with multi-angle polarimeters (MAP) and lidars. The Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar (ACEPOL) campaign was jointly sponsored by NASA and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON). Six instruments were deployed on the ER-2 high-altitude aircraft. Four were MAPs: the Airborne Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP), the Airborne Multiangle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (AirMSPI), the Airborne Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (SPEX airborne), and the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP). The remainder were lidars, including the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) and the High Spectral Resolution Lidar 2 (HSRL-2). The southern California base of ACEPOL enabled observation of a wide variety of scene types, including urban, desert, forest, coastal ocean, and agricultural areas, with clear, cloudy, polluted, and pristine atmospheric conditions. Flights were performed in coordination with satellite overpasses and ground-based observations, including the Ground-based Multiangle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (GroundMSPI), sun photometers, and a surface reflectance spectrometer. ACEPOL is a resource for remote sensing communities as they prepare for the next generation of spaceborne MAP and lidar missions. Data are appropriate for algorithm development and testing, instrument intercomparison, and investigations of active and passive instrument data fusion. They are freely available to the public. The DOI for the primary database is 10.5067/SUBORBITAL/ACEPOL2017/DATA001 (ACEPOL Science Team, 2017), while for AirMSPI it is 10.5067/AIRCRAFT/AIRMSPI/ACEPOL/RADIANCE/ELLIPSOID_V006 and 10.5067/AIRCRAFT/AIRMSPI/ACEPOL/RADIANCE/TERRAIN_V006 (ACEPOL AirMSPI 75 Science Team, 2017a, b). GroundMSPI data are at 10.5067/GROUND/GROUNDMSPI/ACEPOL/RADIANCE_v009 (GroundMSPI Science Team, 2017). Table 3 lists further details of these archives. This paper describes ACEPOL for potential data users and also provides an outline of requirements for future field missions with similar objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric aerosols have been known to be a major source of uncertainties in CO2 concentrations retrieved from space. In this study, we investigate the added value of multi-angle polarimeter (MAP) measurements in the context of the Copernicus candidate mission for anthropogenic CO2 monitoring (CO2M). To this end, we compare aerosol-induced XCO2 errors from standard retrievals using spectrometer only (without MAP) with those from retrievals using both MAP and spectrometer. MAP observations are expected to provide information about aerosols that is useful for improving XCO2 accuracy. For the purpose of this work, we generate synthetic measurements for different atmospheric and geophysical scenes over land, based on which XCO2 retrieval errors are assessed. We show that the standard XCO2 retrieval approach that makes no use of auxiliary aerosol observations returns XCO2 errors with an overall bias of 1.12 ppm, and a spread (defined as half of the 15.9th to the 84.1th percentile range) of 2.07 ppm. The latter is far higher than the required XCO2 accuracy (0.5 ppm) and precision (0.7 ppm) of the CO2M mission. Moreover, these XCO2 errors exhibit a significantly larger bias and scatter at high aerosol optical depth, high aerosol altitude, and low solar zenith angle, which could lead to a worse performance in retrieving XCO2 from polluted areas where CO2 and aerosols are co-emitted. We proceed to determine MAP instrument specifications in terms of wavelength range, number of viewing angles, and measurement uncertainties that are required to achieve XCO2 accuracy and precision targets of the mission. Two different MAP instrument concepts are considered in this analysis. We find that for either concept, MAP measurement uncertainties on radiance and degree of linear polarization should be no more than 3 % and 0.003, respectively. Adopting the derived MAP requirements, a retrieval exercise using both MAP and spectrometer measurements of the synthetic scenes delivers XCO2 errors with an overall bias of −0.004 ppm and a spread of 0.54 ppm, implying compliance with the CO2M mission requirements; the very low bias is especially important for proper emission estimates. For the test ensemble, we find effectively no dependence of the XCO2 errors on aerosol optical depth, altitude of the aerosol layer, and solar zenith angle. These results indicate a major improvement in the retrieved XCO2 accuracy with respect to the standard retrieval approach, which could lead to a higher data yield, better global coverage, and a more comprehensive determination of CO2 sinks and sources. As such, this outcome underlines the contribution of, and therefore the need for, a MAP instrument onboard the CO2M mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present aerosol retrieval results from the ACEPOL (Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar) campaign, which was a joint initiative between NASA and SRON – the Netherlands Institute for Space Research. The campaign took place in October–November 2017 over the western part of the United States. During ACEPOL six different instruments were deployed on the NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft, including four multi-angle polarimeters (MAPs): SPEX airborne, the Airborne Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP), the Airborne Multi-angle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (AirMSPI), and the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP). Also, two lidars participated: the High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2 (HSRL-2) and the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL). Flights were conducted mainly for scenes with low aerosol load over land, but some cases with higher AOD were also observed. We perform aerosol retrievals from SPEX airborne, RSP (410–865 nm range only), and AirMSPI using the SRON aerosol retrieval algorithm and compare the results against AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) and HSRL-2 measurements (for SPEX airborne and RSP). All three MAPs compare well against AERONET for the aerosol optical depth (AOD), with a mean absolute error (MAE) between 0.014 and 0.024 at 440 nm. For the fine-mode effective radius the MAE ranges between 0.021 and 0.028 µm. For the comparison with HSRL-2 we focus on a day with low AOD (0.02–0.14 at 532 nm) over the California Central Valley, Arizona, and Nevada (26 October) as well as a flight with high AOD (including measurements with AOD>1.0 at 532 nm) over a prescribed forest fire in Arizona (9 November). For the day with low AOD the MAEs in AOD (at 532 nm) with HSRL-2 are 0.014 and 0.022 for SPEX and RSP, respectively, showing the capability of MAPs to provide accurate AOD retrievals for the challenging case of low AOD over land. For the retrievals over the smoke plume a reasonable agreement in AOD between the MAPs and HSRL-2 was also found (MAE 0.088 and 0.079 for SPEX and RSP, respectively), despite the fact that the comparison is hampered by large spatial variability in AOD throughout the smoke plume. A good comparison is also found between the MAPs and HSRL-2 for the aerosol depolarization ratio (a measure of particle sphericity), with an MAE of 0.023 and 0.016 for SPEX and RSP, respectively. Finally, SPEX and RSP agree very well for the retrieved microphysical and optical properties of the smoke plume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polarimeter retrievals can provide detailed and accurate information on aerosol microphysical and optical properties. The SRON aerosol algorithm is one of the few retrieval approaches that can fully exploit this information. The algorithm core is a two-mode retrieval in which effective radius (reff), effective variance (veff), refractive index, and column number are retrieved for each mode; the fraction of spheres for the coarse mode and an aerosol layer height are also retrieved. Further, land and ocean properties are retrieved simultaneously with the aerosol properties. In this contribution, we extend the SRON aerosol algorithm by implementing a multimode approach in which each mode has fixed reff and veff. In this way the algorithm obtains more flexibility in describing the aerosol size distribution and avoids the high nonlinear dependence of the forward model on the aerosol size parameters. Conversely, the approach depends on the choice of the modes. We compare the performances of multimode retrievals (varying the number of modes from 2 to 10) with those based on the original (parametric) two-mode approach. Experiments with both synthetic measurements and real measurements (PARASOL satellite level-1 data of intensity and polarization) are conducted. The synthetic data experiments show that multimode retrievals are good alternatives to the parametric two-mode approach. It is found that for multimode approaches, with five modes the retrieval results can already be good for most parameters. The real data experiments (validated with AERONET data) show that, for the aerosol optical thickness (AOT), multimode approaches achieve higher accuracy than the parametric two-mode approach. For single scattering albedo (SSA), both approaches have similar performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we present aerosol level-2 retrieval results from ACEPOL (Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar) campaign, which was a joint initiative between NASA and SRON (NL) and took place October-November 2017 over the western part of the United States. We perform aerosol retrievals using the SRON multimode algorithm on SPEX airborne L1C data, the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) L1 data, and the Airborne Multi-angle SpectroPolarimeter Imager (AirMSPI) L1B2 data. The AERONET data and the High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2 (HSRL2) data are used to validate polarimeter retrieved/diagnostics aerosol properties. The polarimeter retrievals are based on SRON 5-mode approaches. Other multimode (from 6 to 10 modes) tests show similar performances with the 5-mode approach.Validations with AERONET show that SPEX, RSP, and AirMSPI retrievals achieve similar performances on aerosol optical thickness (AOT) and they agree well with AERONET. Here, we also show that AirMSPI-AERONET based on the SRON algorithm compares well with that based on the JPL algorithm. The Angstrom Exponent is compared between SPEX-AERONET and RSP-AERONET when AOT>0.1. Validations with HSRL2 are performed on two days. One day with low aerosol (AOD in range 0.02-0.14) and one day with measurements of an inhomogeneous smoke plume with high AOD (including AOD values > 1.0). Considering the data collocations among instruments, we compare SPEX-HSRL2, RSP-HSRL2, and SPEX-RSP for these two cases. SPEX and RSP both compare well to HSRL2 for AOT, backscatter coefficients, and depolarization ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing consensus in the aerosol remote sensing community that Multi-Angle Photo-polarimetric (MAP) measurements are essential to unambiguously determine all aerosol properties relevant to quantify and understand the impact of aerosols on climate and air quality. This presentation will discuss the advanced algorithm development for aerosol and cloud retrieval from MAP instruments. This includes aerosol and cloud retrieval from the PARASOL mission (2004-2013) and its validation, estimation the Direct Radiative Effect of Aerosols (DREA) using PARASOL and other A-Train sensors, use of Neural Network techniques for cloud retrievals, and aerosol retrieval from airborne MAP instruments. Further, we will discuss the development of the SPEXone instrument for the NASA PACE mission (launch 2022) and its aerosol retrieval capabilities. SPEXone is a high accuracy MAP with 5 viewing angles with hyperspectral capability, that is expected to provide aerosol properties with unprecedented detail and accuracy. On the PACE mission SPEXone will be used in synergy with the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter-2 (HARP-2) and the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]