Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme
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UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik
UP 10: Poster: Umweltphysik
UP 10.17: Poster
Thursday, March 5, 2009, 17:48–19:00, VMP 9 Poster
Retrieval of snow grain size and soot pollution on sea ice with the optical satellite remote sensing instrument MODIS — •Heidrun Wiebe1, Georg Heygster1, and Eleonora Zege2 — 1Institute for Environmental Physics, University of Bremen — 2Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk
Snow fields have potentially significant effects on the planetary albedo and climate. Development of satellite remote sensing of snow is of a great importance particularly for monitoring of snow age, pollution, and grain sizes over the polar regions difficult to access.
As it follows from numerous experimental studies of optical and microphysical snow properties, a snow layer is a multiple scattering close packed medium with irregular shaped non-uniform grains.
The developed algorithm retrieves the effective snow grain size and pollution amount, which does not imply any specific snow model, do not use any a priori suggestions of snow grain shape, and uses the multi-spectral information provided by a satellite optical instrument MODIS. It is especially suitable for polar regions, as it provides a reliable retrieval even at low sun elevations.