Efficient multi-angle polarimetric inversion of aerosols and ocean color powered by a deep neural network forward model

NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, scheduled for launch in the timeframe of 2023, will carry a hyperspectral scanning radiometer named the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) and two multi-angle polarimeters (MAPs): the UMBC Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP2) and the SRON Spectro-Polarimeter for Planetary EXploration one (SPEXone). The MAP measurements contain rich information on the microphysical properties of aerosols and hydrosols and therefore can be used to retrieve accurate aerosol properties for complex atmosphere and ocean systems. Most polarimetric aerosol retrieval algorithms utilize vector radiative transfer models iteratively in an optimization approach, which leads to high computational costs that limit their usage in the operational processing of large data volumes acquired by the MAP imagers. In this work, we propose a deep neural network (NN) forward model to represent the radiative transfer simulation of coupled atmosphere and ocean systems for applications to the HARP2 instrument and its predecessors. Through the evaluation of synthetic datasets for AirHARP (airborne version of HARP2), the NN model achieves a numerical accuracy smaller than the instrument uncertainties, with a running time of 0.01 s in a single CPU core or 1 ms in a GPU. Using the NN as a forward model, we built an efficient joint aerosol and ocean color retrieval algorithm called FastMAPOL, evolved from the well-validated Multi-Angular Polarimetric Ocean coLor (MAPOL) algorithm. Retrievals of aerosol properties and water-leaving signals were conducted on both the synthetic data and the AirHARP field measurements from the Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar (ACEPOL) campaign in 2017. From the validation with the synthetic data and the collocated High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) aerosol products, we demonstrated that the aerosol microphysical properties and water-leaving signals can be retrieved efficiently and within acceptable error. Comparing to the retrieval speed using a conventional radiative transfer forward model, the computational acceleration is 103 times faster with CPU or 104 times with GPU processors. The FastMAPOL algorithm can be used to operationally process the large volume of polarimetric data acquired by PACE and other future Earth-observing satellite missions with similar capabilities.