Polarization Calibration Verification of the Directional Polarimetric Camera on the Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Inventory Satellite

Space-borne multiangle polarization remote sensing is considered to be one of the most important tools to obtain global aerosol parameters in assessment of climate change. Accurate calibration is a prerequisite for quantitative polarization remote sensing. However, most research focuses on the polarization calibration methods and the monitoring of the calibration coefficient stability. Few studies investigate the polarization calibration verification of the subsequent new satellite sensors. The directional polarimetric camera (DPC) onboard the Chinese Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Inventory Satellite (abbreviated as TECIS, with the Chinese name “Gou Mang”) is a brand-new polarization sensor. To evaluate the polarization calibration of this sensor, we propose a verification scheme for polarization calibration, which can verify both the degree of polarization (DoP) and polarized reflectance. The accuracy of DoP is verified by using sunglint on the ocean. When detecting the sunglint, constraints such as observational geometry, cloud identification, and wind speed are introduced, and the polarized reflectance is atmospherically corrected according to the marine aerosol model and aerosol optical depth (AOD) from MODIS. The accuracy of polarized reflectance at the top of atmosphere (TOA) is verified based on AERONET inversion products and the bidirectional polarization distribution functions (BPDFs). Experiments show that the accuracies of DoP of the three polarization channels (490, 670, 865 nm) of DPC are 5.57%, 2.07%, and 1.97%, respectively, and the average accuracy of the multiangle polarized reflectance at the TOA of the 865 nm channel is 0.209%.