Sua pan surface bidirectional reflectance: a case study to evaluate the effect of atmospheric correction on the surface products of the multi-angle imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) during SAFARI 2000

This paper presents a validation case study of Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) surface products where its bidirectional reflectance (BRF) measurements during the Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000) campaign are compared with those coincidently evaluated on the ground and from the air, using the Portable Apparatus for Rapid Acquisition of Bidirectional Observations of Land and Atmosphere (PARABOLA) and Cloud Absorption Radiometer observations, respectively. The presence of haze and smoke during the campaign provided a case study to evaluate the effect of atmospheric correction on MISR surface products. Two surface types were considered in the analyses: the bright desert-like surface of the Pan and the dark grassland that surrounds it. The results show that for the dark surface the BRF values retrieved from MISR are in good agreement, within 5%, with those obtained from field data. For the bright desert-like pan surface, better agreement, within /spl sim/10%, was found in all channels on the clear day but only in the forward scattering on the hazy day. A comparison of MISR aerosol retrievals to those obtained from three independent ground measurements suggests that, in the presence of a highly reflective surface, small uncertainties in the MISR aerosol retrievals become magnified at larger optical depths, causing errors in the surface BRF retrievals.