Articles | Volume 10, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-333-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-333-2017
Research article
 | 
27 Jan 2017
Research article |  | 27 Jan 2017

Accounting for the effects of surface BRDF on satellite cloud and trace-gas retrievals: a new approach based on geometry-dependent Lambertian equivalent reflectivity applied to OMI algorithms

Alexander Vasilkov, Wenhan Qin, Nickolay Krotkov, Lok Lamsal, Robert Spurr, David Haffner, Joanna Joiner, Eun-Su Yang, and Sergey Marchenko

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Short summary
We show how the surface reflection can vary day to day in the blue part of the sun's spectrum where we measure the pollutant gas nitrogen dioxide using a satellite instrument called OMI. We use information from an imaging spectrometer on another satellite, MODIS, to estimate the angular surface effects. We can then use models of how the sunlight travels through the atmosphere to predict how the angle-dependent surface reflection will impact the values of pollutant levels inferred by OMI.