Simultaneous Estimation Method of Mutually Correlated Geophysical Parameters and Its Application of Aerosol Parameter Estimation

A method of simultaneous estimation of aerosol size distribution and refractive index from ground-based observation of the direct, diffuse, aureole radiance and polarization measurement data is proposed. In the method, a polarization computation based on the successive orders of scattering by separating the molecular and aerosol phase functions to the parallel and perpendicular polarization components in the first order scattering (single scattering) is introduced. Through a comparison between the proposed method and the Volume Spectral Analysis soft (Skyrad.pack) developed by Nakajima et al., it is found that the proposed method is superior to the Skyrad.pack method as aerosol optical depth is thin.