Improved Ocean-Color Remote Sensing in the Arctic Using the POLYMER Algorithm

Robert Frouin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, rfrouin@ucsd.edu (Presenter)
Pierre-Yves Deschamps, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, pdeschamps@mail.ucsd.edu
Bruno Pelletier, Department of Mathematics, Uinversity of Rennes II, bpelletier@ucsd.edu
Didier Ramon, HYGEOS, Euratechnologies, dr@hygeos.com
François Steinmetz, HYGEOS, Euratechnologies, fs@hygeos.com

A flexible atmospheric correction algorithm, referred to as POLYMER (Steinmetz and al., 2011), has been applied to MERIS data acquired over the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas during ICESCAPE. This algorithm does not use a specific aerosol model, but fits the atmospheric reflectance by a polynomial with a non spectral term that accounts for any non spectral scattering (clouds, coarse aerosol mode) or reflection (glitter, whitecaps, small ice surfaces), a spectral term with a law in wavelength to the power -1 (fine aerosol mode), and a spectral term with a law in wavelength to the power -4 (molecular scattering, adjacency effects from clouds and white surfaces). The derived ocean properties, i.e., marine reflectance and chlorophyll concentration, are compared with those obtained with the standard MEGS algorithm. The POLYMER values are more realistic in regions affected by the ice environment, e.g., higher chlorophyll concentration near the ice edge, and spatial coverage is substantially increased. Good retrievals are obtained in the presence of thin clouds, with ocean color features exhibiting spatial continuity from clear to cloudy regions. A first application to MODIS imagery is presented, revealing that POLYMER is robust when pixels are contaminated by sea ice.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Other   (Wed 10:00 AM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Frouin, Robert: Improving existing satellite color observations of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas for biogeochemical modeling ...details

Poster Location ID: 159