A new method for estimating aerosol properties and surface reflectance from POLDER data over land

The Asian dust is regarded as a main source of atmospheric aerosols over East Asia in the late winter and spring seasons and has significant effects on the climate change. In this study, a new method for estimating optical aerosol properties such as the optical thickness of aerosols, the complex refractive index and the number size distribution (the exponent of Junge power-law) from the polarized radiances received by the POLDER is described. After that, the surface reflectance is derived from the measured total radiance on the basis of the estimated aerosol properties. This method was applied to ADEOSII/POLDER data and PARASOL/POLDER data over land. As a result, it is shown that the surface reflectance and aerosol properties are successfully estimated from the total and polarized radiances measured by the POLDER.