Effect of Scattering Angle on Earth Reflectance

After March 2020 the range of scattering angle for DSCOVR EPIC and NISTAR has been substantially increased with its upper bound reaching 178°. This provides a unique opportunity to observe bi-directional effects of reflectance near backscattering directions. The dependence of the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance on scattering angle is shown separately for ocean and land areas, for cloudy and clear pixels, while cloudy pixels are also separated into liquid and ice clouds. A strong increase of TOA reflectance towards backscattering direction is reported for all components (except cloudless areas over ocean). The observed increase of reflectance is confirmed by cloud and vegetation models. The strongest correlation between TOA reflectance and scattering angle was found near IR where contribution from vegetation dominates. Surface Bidirectional Reflectance Factor (BRF) acquired by DSCOVR EPIC and Terra MISR sensors over the Amazon basin is used to demonstrate the bi-directional effects of solar zenith and scattering angles on variation of reflected radiation from rainforest.

Effect of small-scale snow surface roughness on snow albedo and reflectance

The primary goal of this paper is to present a model of snow surface albedo accounting for small-scale surface roughness effects. The model is based on photon recollision probability, and it can be combined with existing bulk volume albedo models, such as Two-streAm Radiative TransfEr in Snow (TARTES). The model is fed with in situ measurements of surface roughness from plate profile and laser scanner data, and it is evaluated by comparing the computed albedos with observations. It provides closer results to empirical values than volume-scattering-based albedo simulations alone. The impact of surface roughness on albedo increases with the progress of the melting season and is larger for larger solar zenith angles. In absolute terms, small-scale surface roughness can decrease the total albedo by up to about 0.1. As regards the bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF), it is found that surface roughness increases backward scattering especially for large solar zenith angle values.

Influence of forest floor vegetation on the total forest reflectance and its implications for LAI estimation using vegetation indices

Recently a simple analytic canopy bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) model based on the spectral invariants theory was presented. The model takes into account that the recollision probability in the forest canopy is different for the first scattering than the later ones. Here this model is extended to include the forest floor contribution to the total forest BRF. The effect of the understory vegetation on the total forest BRF as well as on the simple ratio (SR) and the normalized difference (NDVI) vegetation indices is demonstrated for typical cases of boreal forest. The relative contribution of the forest floor to the total BRF was up to 69 % in the red wavelength range and up to 54 % in the NIR wavelength range. Values of SR and NDVI for the forest and the canopy differed within 10 % and 30 % in red and within 1 % and 10 % in the NIR wavelength range. The relative variation of the BRF with the azimuth and view zenith angles was not very sensitive to the forest floor vegetation. Hence, linear correlation of the modelled total BRF and the Ross-thick kernel was strong for dense forests (R2 > 0.9). The agreement between modelled BRF and satellite-based reflectance values was good when measured LAI, clumping index and leaf single scattering albedo values for a boreal forest were used as input to the model.

Effect of small-scale snow surface roughness on snow albedo and reflectance

The primary goal of this paper is to present a model of snow surface albedo accounting for small-scale surface roughness effects. The model is based on photon recollision probability and it can be combined with existing bulk volume albedo models, such as TARTES. The model is fed with in situ measurements of surface roughness from plate profile and laser scanner data, and it is evaluated by comparing the computed albedos with observations. It provides closer results to empirical values than volume scattering based albedo simulations alone. The impact of surface roughness on albedo increases with the progress of the melting season and is larger for larger solar zenith angles. In absolute terms, surface roughness can decrease the total albedo by up to about 0.1. As regards the bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF), it is found that surface roughness increases backward scattering especially for large solar zenith angle values.

Instantaneous Top-of-Atmosphere Albedo Comparison between CERES and MISR over the Arctic

The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) albedo is one of the key parameters in determining the Arctic radiation budget, with continued validation of its retrieval accuracy still required. Based on three years (2007, 2015, 2016) of summertime (May–September) observations from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) and the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR), collocated instantaneous albedos for overcast ocean and snow/ice scenes were compared within the Arctic. For samples where both instruments classified the scene as overcast, the relative root-mean-square (RMS) difference between the sample albedos grew as the solar zenith angle (SZA) increased. The RMS differences that were purely due to differential Bidirectional Reflectance Factor (BRF) anisotropic corrections ( σ A D M ) were estimated to be less than 4% for overcast ocean and overcast snow/ice when the SZA ≤ 70°. The significant agreement between the CERES and MISR strongly increased our confidence in using the instruments overcast cloud albedos in Arctic studies. Nevertheless, there was less agreement in the cloud albedos for larger solar zenith angles, where the RMS differences of σ A D M reached 13.5% for overcast ocean scenes when the SZA > 80°. Additionally, inconsistencies between the CERES and MISR scene identifications were examined, resulting in an overall recommendation for improvements to the MISR snow/ice mask and a rework of the MISR Albedo Cloud Designation (ACD) field by incorporating known strengths of the standard MISR cloud masks.

Spectral Invariant Provides a Practical Modeling Approach for Future Biophysical Variable Estimations

This paper presents a simple radiative transfer model based on spectral invariant properties (SIP). The canopy structure parameters, including the leaf angle distribution and multi-angular clumping index, are explicitly described in the SIP model. The SIP model has been evaluated on its bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) in the angular space at the radiation transfer model intercomparison platform, and in the spectrum space by the PROSPECT+SAIL (PROSAIL) model. The simulations of BRF by SIP agreed well with the reference values in both the angular space and spectrum space, with a root-mean-square-error (RMSE) of 0.006. When compared with the widely-used Soil-Canopy Observation of Photochemistry and Energy fluxes (SCOPE) model on fPAR, the RMSE was 0.006 and the R2 was 0.99, which shows a high accuracy. This study also suggests the newly proposed vegetation index, the near-infrared (NIR) reflectance of vegetation (NIRv), was a good linear approximation of the canopy structure parameter, the directional area scattering factor (DASF), with an R2 of 0.99. NIRv was not influenced much by the soil background contribution, but was sensitive to the leaf inclination angle. The sensitivity of NIRv to canopy structure and the robustness of NIRv to the soil background suggest NIRv is a promising index in future biophysical variable estimations with the support of the SIP model, especially for the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) observations near the hot spot directions.

Accelerated RAPID Model Using Heterogeneous Porous Objects

To enhance the capability of three-dimensional (3D) radiative transfer models at the kilometer scale (km-scale), the radiosity applicable to porous individual objects (RAPID) model has been upgraded to RAPID3. The major innovation is that the homogeneous porous object concept (HOMOBJ) used for a tree crown scale is extended to a heterogeneous porous object (HETOBJ) for a forest plot scale. Correspondingly, the radiosity-graphics-combined method has been extended from HOMOBJ to HETOBJ, including the random dynamic projection algorithm, the updated modules of view factors, the single scattering estimation, the multiple scattering solutions, and the bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) calculations. Five cases of the third radiation transfer model intercomparison (RAMI-3) have been used to verify RAPID3 by the RAMI-3 online checker. Seven scenes with different degrees of topography (valleys and hills) at 500 m size have also been simulated. Using a personal computer (CPU 2.5 GHz, memory 4 GB), the computation time of BRF at 500 m is only approximately 13 min per scene. The mean root mean square error is 0.015. RAPID3 simulated the enhanced contrast of BRF between backward and forward directions due to topography. RAPID3 has been integrated into the free RAPID platform, which should be very useful for the remote sensing community. In addition, the HETOBJ concept may also be useful for the speedup of ray tracing models.