ABSTRACT
An all-sky imaging polarimeter was deployed in summer 2008 to the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii to study clear-sky atmospheric skylight polarization. The imager operates in five wavebands in the visible and near infrared spectrum and has a fisheye lens for all-sky viewing. This paper describes the deployment and presents comparisons of the degree of skylight polarization observed to similar data observed by Coulson with a principal-plane scanning polarimeter in the late 1970s. In general, the results compared favorably to those of Coulson. In addition, we present quantitative results correlating a variation of the maximum degree of polarization over a range of 70-85% to fluctuation in underlying surface reflectance and upwelling radiance data from the GOES satellite.
ABSTRACT
Visible-band and near infrared polarization and radiance images measured with a ground-based full-sky polarimeter are compared against a successive orders of scattering (SOS) radiative transfer model for 2009 summer cloud-free days in Bozeman, Montana, USA. The polarimeter measures radiance and polarization in 10-nm bands centered at 450 nm, 490 nm, 530 nm, 630 nm, and 700 nm. AERONET products are used to represent aerosols in the SOS model, while MISR satellite BRF products are used for the surface reflectance. While model results generally agree well with observation, the simulated degree of polarization is typically higher than observed data. Potential sources of this difference may include cloud contamination and/or underestimation of the AERONET-retrieved aerosol real refractive index. Problems with the retrieved parameters are not unexpected given the low aerosol optical depth range (0.025 to 0.17 at 500 nm) during the study and the corresponding difficulties that these conditions pose to the AERONET inversion algorithm.
