Atmospheric correction of ocean color imagery over turbid coastal waters using active and passive remote sensing

This paper demonstrates an atmospheric correction method to process MODIS/Aqua (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) ocean color imagery over turbid coastal waters with the aid of concurrent CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol LIdar with Orthogonal Polarization) aerosol data, assuming that there exists “nonturbid” water in the study area where MODIS aerosol optical properties can be retrieved accurately. Aerosol properties from CALIOP measurements were obtained and related to those from MODIS. This relationship, combined with CALIOP aerosol data, was extended to turbid water to derive MODIS aerosol properties, where atmospheric correction using MODIS data alone often fails. By combining MODIS and CALIOP data, aerosol signals were separated from the total signals at the satellite level, and water-leaving radiances in turbid waters were subsequently derived. This method was tested on several MODIS/Aqua ocean color images over South China turbid waters. Comparison with field data shows that this method was effective in reducing the errors in the retrieved water-leaving radiance values to some extent. In the Zhujiang (Pearl) River Estuary, this method did not overestimate the aerosol effects as severely, and provided far fewer negative water-leaving radiance values than the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) default methods that used MODIS data alone.