Stray light and ocean-color remote sensing

Instruments used to make radiometric measurements of the ocean are typically calibrated against incandescent sources with a spectral distribution that peaks in the near-infrared while the radiant flux from the ocean peaks in the blue to green spectral region. Because of the different spectral distributions between the calibration source and the ocean color, stray light (or spectral out-of-band) in an instrument´s response can cause significant systematic errors in the measurement of optical properties of the ocean. Approaches to the stray-light characterization and correction of instrumentation used to develop remotely sensed ocean color data products are presented in this work. The goal is to reduce the variance in radiometric measurements of ocean color to produce more consistent long-term, multi-sensor (both ground- and satellite-based) data sets that may lead to increased understanding of bio-physical processes in the oceans.