A method of retrieving BRDF from surface-reflected radiance using decoupling of atmospheric radiative transfer and surface reflection

Abstract

Bi-directional reflection distribution function (BRDF) defines anisotropy of the surface reflection. It is required to specify the boundary condition for radiative transfer (RT) modeling used in aerosol retrievals, cloud retrievals, atmospheric modeling, and other applications. Ground based measurements of reflected radiance draw increasing attention as a source of information about anisotropy of surface reflection. Derivation of BRDF from surface radiance requires atmospheric correction. This study develops a new method of retrieving BRDF on its whole domain, making it immediately suitable for further atmospheric RT modeling applications. The method is based on the integral equation relating surface-reflected radiance, BRDF, and solutions of two auxiliary atmosphere-only RT problems. The method requires kernel-based BRDF. The weights of the kernels are obtained with a quickly converging iterative procedure. RT modeling has to be done only one time before the start of iterative process.