The Nonlinear Effective Attenuation Coefficient of Spaceborne Oceanic Lidar Signal

Qun Liu; Dong Liu; Jian Bai; Xiaoyu Cui; Yudi Zhou; Peituo Xu; Zhipeng Liu; Xiaobin Wang

doi:10.1051/epjconf/202023708022

Proceedings

Open Access

EPJ Web of Conferences 237, 08022 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202023708022

The Nonlinear Effective Attenuation Coefficient of Spaceborne Oceanic Lidar Signal

Qun Liu, Dong Liu^*, Jian Bai, Xiaoyu Cui, Yudi Zhou, Peituo Xu, Zhipeng Liu and Xiaobin Wang

State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

^* Email: liudongopt@zju.edu.cn

Published online: 7 July 2020

Abstract

Multiple scattering is an inevitable effect in spaceborne oceanic lidar because of the large footprint size and the high optical density of seawater. The effective attenuation coefficient k_lidar in oceanic lidar equation, which indicates the influence of the multiple scattering effect on the formation of lidar returns, is an important parameter in the retrieval of inherent optical properties (IOPs) of seawater. In this paper, the nonlinearity of k_lidar and the relationships between k_lidar and the IOPs of seawater are investigated by solving the radiative transfer equation with an improved semianalytic Monte Carlo model. k_lidar is found to decrease exponentially with the increase of depth in homogeneous waters. k_lidar is given as an exponential function of depth and IOPs of seawater. The results in this paper can help to have a better understanding of the multiple scattering effect of spaceborne lidar and improve the retrieval accuracy of the IOPs of seawater using spaceborne lidar.

© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2020

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.