Simple and practical ocean color remote sensing atmospheric correction method using CALIPSO LIDAR and sun photometer measurements in Case II waters

In the ocean color remote sensing, about 90% of sensor-measured signals contributed by atmosphere need to be removed by implementing atmospheric correction, which is a key procedure for quantitatively retrieving water color parameters from the remotely sensed observations. In the coastal and inland turbid waters (Case II waters), the standard atmospheric correction algorithm embedded in SeaDAS frequently yields negative water-leaving radiance values, it is partly because of the overestimation of atmospheric aerosol influence. A modified atmospheric correction method was proposed to correct the atmospheric aerosol effect in Case II waters in this paper. The default NASA atmospheric correction scheme was used to retrieve the primal aerosol information and identify the standard atmospheric correction algorithm failure area. The aerosol information derived from CALIPSO LIDAR and sun photometer on the same day was utilized to retrieve the water-leaving radiance in Case II waters. From the comparison with the results from SeaDAS and the in-situ data, the results showed that the modified atmospheric correction method could be effective in Case II waters.