An Experimental Study of the Optical Properties of Water Based on an Anomalously Weak Dependence of Apparent Radiance of the Snell-Window Boundary on Its Turbidity

This work is devoted to an experimental study of the possibilities to use the Snell-window image for estimating the optical properties of water. The research is based on the algorithm for estimating the absorption coefficient on the basis of an analytical model of the Snell window, which was proposed in the previous work. The algorithm was tested using the water samples from the Gorky Reservoir in which high concentrations of dissolved organic matter are recorded and abundant bloom of the blue-green algae is observed. In this work, we present a technique for recording the Snell-window images and practical results of estimating the water absorption coefficients in three spectral channels, which are in good agreement with the results of the accompanying measurements.