The sensitivity of polarized radiative transfer to the aerosol properties and surface

Based on the established vector radiative transfer model, we simulated several types of aerosols to analyze the sensitivity of scattering parameters to aerosols' properties and Lambert surface. All simulations are done at a single near-infrared wavelength of 0.865 μm, and aerosols are assumed to be spherical. According to the simulations, we concluded that scattering stokes parameter Q at the back scattering angles region (135°-180°) is very sensitive to real refractive index ( n r ) and can be used to retrieval it. The polarization parameters Q and U are sensitive to imaginary refractive index but the size distribution has great impact on its' sensitivity; for large aerosol particles, they are more sensitive than I and for small particles they have comparable sensitivity with I . The parameter Q is very sensitive to the optic depth as well as parameter I , when the cosine value of the solar zenith angle cosθ 0 ≤0.6, Q is much more sensitive than I at back scattering angles region (155°-180°), and the parameter Q can be use to retrieve total optic depth rather than the optic depth of small particles.