Polarization techniques for the retrieval of water parameters from above and below water polarimetric observations

The next generation of Ocean Color satellite sensors (PACE, NASA) will have polarization sensitive channels which will make possible to continue the time series of polarization acquisitions from space initiated by the French missions POLDER/PARASOL (CNES) and can be used to acquire additional information on ocean water constituents. The water attenuation coefficient is not retrievable by the exclusive use of the unpolarized measurements of the water-leaving radiance. However, we recently showed that the underwater degree of linear polarization (DoLP) can be fairly related to the attenuation/absorption ratio (c/a) which enables us to achieve retrievals of the absorption and attenuation coefficients from measurements of the Stokes components of the upwelling underwater light field. The relationship between the DoLP and the attenuation/absorption (c/a) ratio is investigated based on vector radiative transfer simulations of the underwater polarized light field for several wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum, for a complete set of viewing geometries and for varying water compositions with water constituents include phytoplankton, non-algal particles and CDOM. It is shown that the relationship that exists between DoLP and c/a ratio has an excellent correlation for wide range of different viewing and Sun's geometries opening the possibility for air or space borne DoLP measurements of the ocean and therefore retrieval of additional water optical properties.

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