Satellite Aerosol Retrieval From Multiangle Polarimetric Measurements: Information Content and Uncertainty Analysis

The multiangle polarimetric (MAP) instruments have been a focus of recent satellite missions dedicated to enhanced detection of global aerosol microphysical properties. Considering that satellite observations can hardly infer all the unknowns of atmosphere and surface, it is crucial to know how many and which aerosol parameters can be accurately retrieved from these different MAP measurements as well as their uncertainties. In this study, we present a comprehensive insight into the information content of POLarization and Directionality of Earth Reflectance-3 (POLDER-3) and multiviewing, multichannel, multipolarization imager (3MI) observations for aerosol retrievals and estimate posterior errors of corresponding parameters based on the Bayesian theory. The total degree of freedom for signal (DFS) of aerosol retrievals is around 6–8 from POLDER-3 and is raised by
$\sim $
1.8–3.5 with 3MI. The retrieval accuracy of volume concentration and effective radius is high (< 4%) in the fine-dominant case for both POLDER-3 and 3MI but gets much lower (
$\sim $
8% and
$\sim $
15%) in coarse-dominant conditions. Furthermore, the advanced 3MI measurements can upgrade the retrieval uncertainties of POLDER-3 by
$\sim $
50%. Though additional shortwave infrared bands of 3MI provide more information regarding coarse particles, the influence of aerosols on surface bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) leads to a decrease in the total DFS. With a prior assumption that variations of refractive index depend on wavelength, satellite retrieval accuracy of the real part (MR) (< 0.03) and imaginary part (MI) (< 0.003) reaches close levels with that of ground-based Sun photometers. Our results can provide a fundamental reference for MAP satellite retrieval of aerosol microphysical properties.