Self-shading associated with a skylight-blocked approach system for the measurement of water-leaving radiance and its correction.

Self-shading associated with a skylight-blocked approach (SBA) system for the measurement of water-leaving radiance (L-w) and its correction [Appl. Opt. 52, 1693 (2013)] is characterized by Monte Carlo simulations, and it is found that this error is in a range of similar to 1%-20% under most water properties and solar positions. A model for estimating this shading error is further developed, and eventually a scheme to correct this error based on the shaded measurements is proposed and evaluated. It is found that the shade-corrected value in the visible domain is within 3% of the true value, which thus indicates that we can obtain not only high precision but also high accuracy Lw in the field with the SBA scheme. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America