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The Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) mission, and in particular the Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observations–Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) instrument, has the advantage of being able to measure simultaneously the same field of view in different spectral ranges with a high spectral resolution. These features allow studying the benefits of using multispectral measurements to improve the CO2 and CH4 retrievals. In order to quantify the impact of the spectral synergy on the retrieval accuracy, we performed an information content (IC) analysis from simulated spectra corresponding to the three infrared bands of TANSO-FTS. The advantages and limitations of using thermal and shortwave infrared simultaneously are discussed according to surface type and state vector composition. The IC is then used to determine the most informative spectral channels for the simultaneous retrieval of CO2 and CH4. The results show that a channel selection spanning the three infrared bands can improve the computation time and retrieval accuracy. Therefore, a selection of less than 700 channels from the thermal infrared (TIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands allows retrieving CO2 and CH4 simultaneously with a similar accuracy to using all channels together to retrieve each gas separately.

In this paper seven vector radiative transfer codes are inter-compared for the case of underlying black surface. They include three techniques based on the discrete ordinate method (DOM), two Monte-Carlo methods, the successive orders scattering method, and a modified doubling-adding technique. It was found that all codes give very similar results. Therefore, we were able to produce benchmark results for the Stokes parameters both for reflected and transmitted light in the cases of molecular, aerosol and cloudy multiply scattering media. It was assumed that the single scattering albedo is equal to one. Benchmark results have been provided by several studies before, including Coulson et al. [22], Garcia and Siewert [7,8], Wauben and Hovenier [10], and Natraj et al. [11] among others. However, the case of the elongated phase functions such as for a cloud and with a high angular resolution is presented here for the first time. Also in difference with other studies, we make inter-comparisons using several codes for the same input dataset, which enables us to quantify the corresponding errors more accurately.

Various ice particle habits are investigated in conjunction with inferring the optical properties of ice cloud for the Global Change Observation Mission-Climate (GCOM-C) satellite program. A database of the single-scattering properties of five ice particle habits, namely, plates, columns, droxtals, bullet-rosettes, and Voronoi, is developed. The database is based on the specification of the Second Generation Global Imager (SGLI) sensor onboard the GCOM-C satellite, which is scheduled to be launched in 2017 by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). A combination of the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, Geometric Optics Integral Equation (GOIE) technique, and geometric optics method (GOM) are applied to compute the single-scattering properties of the selected ice particle habits at 36 wavelengths, from the visible-to-infrared spectral region, covering the SGLI channels for the size parameter, which is defined with respect to the equivalent-volume radius sphere, which ranges between 6 and 9000. The database includes the extinction efficiency, absorption efficiency, average geometrical cross-section, single-scattering albedo, asymmetry factor, size parameter of an equivalent volume sphere, maximum distance from the center of mass, particle volume, and six non-zero elements of the scattering phase matrix. The characteristics of the calculated extinction efficiency, single-scattering albedo, and asymmetry factor of the five ice particle habits are compared. Furthermore, the optical thickness and spherical albedo of ice clouds using the five ice particle habit models are retrieved from the Polarization and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectances-3 (POLDER-3) measurements on board the Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Sciences coupled with Observations from a Lidar (PARASOL). The optimal ice particle habit for retrieving the SGLI ice cloud properties was investigated by adopting the spherical albedo difference (SAD) method. It is found that the SAD, for bullet-rosette particle, with radii of equivalent volume spheres (r~) ranging between 6 to 10 μm, and the Voronoi particle, with r~ ranging between 28 to 38 μm, and 70 to 100 μm, is distributed stably as the scattering angle increases. It is confirmed that the SAD of small bullet rosette and all sizes of voronoi particles has a low angular dependence, indicating that the combination of the bullet-rosette and Voronoi models are sufficient for retrieval of the ice cloud spherical albedo and optical thickness as an effective habit models of the SGLI sensor. Finally, SAD analysis based on the Voronoi habit model with moderate particles (r~ = 30 μm) is compared to the conventional General Habit Mixture (GHM), Inhomogeneous Hexagonal Monocrystal (IHM), 5-plate aggregate and ensemble ice particle model. It is confirmed that the Voronoi habit model has an effect similar to the counterparts of some conventional models on the retrieval of ice cloud properties from space-borne radiometric observations.

While several papers deal with effects of truncation techniques on the total radiance there is a lack of such studies concerning polarized radiance. We present our first results obtained in studying the impact of phase matrix truncation on the accuracy of polarized radiance. Like for the total radiance, the single scattering (TMS) correction is crucial and efficient in case of the polarized radiance. We show that there is a systematic error on polarized radiance that increases with truncation factor and optical depth. This error is not induced by the restitution of the phase matrix angular dependency as a function of the number of terms in the Legendre polynomials expansion. Given a truncation factor, this error reaches a maximum asymptotic value for optical depth corresponding to the saturation of polarization. For the cloud droplet that we use in our study, the maximum error is 4.5% at λ=412nm. It raises the question of whether the condition for scale invariance of the scalar radiative transfer equation...

A polarized atmospheric radiative transfer model for the computation of radiative transfer inside three-dimensional inhomogeneous mediums is described. This code is based on Monte Carlo methods and takes into account the polarization state of the light. Specificities introduced by such consideration are presented. After validation of the model by comparisons with adding-doubling computations, examples of reflectances simulated from a synthetic inhomogeneous cirrus cloud are analyzed and compared with reflectances obtained with the classical assumption of a plane parallel homogeneous cloud (1D approximation). As polarized reflectance is known to saturate for optical thickness of about 3, one could think that they should be less sensitive to 3D effects than total reflectances. However, at high spatial resolution (80 m), values of polarized reflectances much higher than the ones predicted by the 1D theory can be reached. The study of the reflectances of a step cloud shows that these large values are the results of illumination and shadowing effects similar to those often observed on total reflectances. In addition, we show that for larger spatial resolution (10 km), the so-called plane-parallel bias leads to a non-negligible overestimation of the polarized reflectances of about 7–8%.

In the near future, more and more spaceborne or airborne instruments will be able to measure polarized reflectance issued from the atmosphere. To give some examples, currently, the POLarization and Directionality of the Earth’s Reflectance instrument POLDER3/ PARASOL, which is the successor of POLDER2/ADEOS2 and POLDER/ADEOS (Deschamps et al., 1994) measures, since 2005, the polarized signal in the visible spectral range with up to 14 viewing directions. The airborne version of this instrument, called OSIRIS (observing system including polarization in the solar infrared spectrum (Auriol et al., 2008)), is nowadays extended to the near-infrared range and will maybe, in the future, generate a spaceborne version. The Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS), the spaceborne version of the Research Scanning Radiometer (RSP) will be able to measure reflected total and polarized light in visible, near infrared, and short-wave infrared and should be launched in the framework of the Glory mission in 2010 (Mishchenko et al., 2007).

The influence is investigated of the assumed ice particle microphysical and optical model on inferring ice cloud optical thickness (τ) from satellite measurements of the Earth's reflected shortwave radiance. Ice cloud τ are inferred, and subsequently compared, using products from MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and POLDER (POLarization and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectances). POLDER τ values are found to be substantially smaller than those from collocated MODIS data. It is shown that this difference is caused primarily by the use of different ice particle bulk scattering models in the two retrievals, and more specifically, the scattering phase function. Furthermore, the influence of the ice particle model on the derivation of ice cloud radiative forcing (CRF) from satellite retrievals is studied. Three sets of shortwave CRF are calculated using different combinations of the retrieval and associated ice particle models. It is shown that the uncertainty associated with an ice particle model may lead to two types of errors in estimating CRF from satellite retrievals. One stems from the retrieval itself and the other is due to the optical properties, such as the asymmetry factor, used for CRF calculations. Although a comparison of the CRFs reveals that these two types of errors tend to cancel each other, significant differences are still found between the three CRFs, which indicates that the ice particle model affects not only optical thickness retrievals but also CRF calculations. In addition to CRF, the effect of the ice particle model on the derivation of seasonal variation of τ from satellite measurements is discussed. It is shown that optical thickness retrievals based on the same MODIS observations, but derived using different assumptions of the ice particle model, can be substantially different. These differences can be divided into two parts. The first-order difference is mainly caused by the differences in the asymmetry factor. The second-order difference is related to seasonal changes in the sampled scattering angles and therefore dependent on the sun-satellite viewing geometry. Because of this second-order difference, the use of different ice particle models may lead to a different understanding of the seasonal variation of τ.