Ocean Backscatter Profiling Using High-Spectral-Resolution Lidar and a Perturbation Retrieval

Ocean lidar attenuation and scattering parameters were derived from a high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL) using two different retrieval techniques. The first used the standard HSRL retrieval, and the second used only the total backscatter channel and a perturbation retrieval (PR). The motivation i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRemote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 10; no. 12; p. 2003
Main Authors Churnside, James, Hair, Johnathan, Hostetler, Chris, Scarino, Amy
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.12.2018
Subjects
Aircraft
Attenuation coefficients
Backscattering
Calibration
Estimates
high spectral resolution lidar
Iodine
Lasers
Lidar
Light
Motivation
ocean optics
oceanography
Optical properties
Optics
Parameter estimation
Perturbation
Regression analysis
Retrieval
Scattering
Seawater
Variability
New York
United States > US
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Summary:Ocean lidar attenuation and scattering parameters were derived from a high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL) using two different retrieval techniques. The first used the standard HSRL retrieval, and the second used only the total backscatter channel and a perturbation retrieval (PR). The motivation is to evaluate differences between the two techniques that would affect the decision of whether to use a simple backscatter lidar or a more complex HSRL in future applications. For the data set investigated, the attenuation coefficient from the PR was an average of 11% lower than that from the HSRL. The PR estimate of the scattering parameter decreased with depth relative to the HSRL estimate, although the overall bias was zero as a result of the calibration procedure. Near the surface, the coefficient of variability in both estimates of attenuation and in HSRL estimates of scattering were around 5%, but that in the PR estimate of scattering was over 10%. At greater depths, the variability increases for all of the profile parameters. The correlation between the two estimates of attenuation coefficient was 0.7. The correlation between scattering parameters was > 0.8 near the surface, but decreased to 0.4 at a depth of around 20 m. Overall, the PR performed better relative to the HSRL in offshore waters than in nearshore waters.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs10122003