Study of the effects of phytoplankton morphology and vertical profile on lidar attenuated backscatter and depolarization ratio Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2018 Elsevier Ltd Propagation of a lidar beam in a coupled atmosphere-ocean model consisting of multiple atmospheric and upper oceanic layers and a rough ocean surface is studied by using a vectorized Monte Carlo radiative transfer solver optimized specifically for lidar-based remote sensing applications. The effects of assumed phytoplankton morphology variations and its vertical distribution on the lidar attenuated backscatter and depolarization ratio are studied. In this study, a phytoplankton particle is assumed to be a sphere, a sphere with a core, or a randomly distorted hexahedron with or without a core. The single-scattering properties of the nonspherical/inhomogeneous particles are computed using appropriate state-of-the-art light-scattering computational capabilities. Vertical variation of the phytoplankton distribution is derived explicitly using a PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) limited carbon biomass balance equation that is subsequently coupled with the Monte Carlo solver.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE SPECTROSCOPY & RADIATIVE TRANSFER

author list (cited authors)

  • Stegmann, P. G., Sun, B., Ding, J., Yang, P., & Zhang, X.

citation count

  • 6

complete list of authors

  • Stegmann, Patrick G||Sun, Bingqiang||Ding, Jiachen||Yang, Ping||Zhang, Xiaodong

publication date

  • March 2019