Influence of Air Bubbles in Seawater on the Formation of Lidar Returns

Air bubbles arising in water under the action of wind-driven sea waves or as a result of the vital activity of pelagic microorganisms and concentrated in the subsurface water layer change the optical properties of seawater. In the present paper, numerical experiments are performed to investigate the influence of the air bubbles on the characteristics of lidar returns in airborne sensing of seawater with both linearly polarized and unpolarized radiation. The dependencies of the lidar return characteristics on the air bubble concentration, their microstructure, and optical and geometrical conditions of observations are examined for the radiation wavelength (lambda) = 0.53 (mu)m.