Non-Lambertian Snow Surface Reflection Models for Simulated Top-of-the-atmosphere Radiances in the NIR and SWIR Wavelengths

Accurately modeling snow reflectance is one way to improve satellite observations in the high-latitude regions. Snow surfaces are known to be challenging for atmospheric retrievals in the short-wave infrared (SWIR) wavelength regime due to their low reflectance. For example, current algorithms for satellite-based remote sensing of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) do not take into account the unique reflective properties of snow surfaces. In this paper, we present a measurement-based snow surface reflectance model in the near-infrared (NIR; 755–775 nm) and SWIR (1590–1620 nm, 2040–2080 nm) bands used in remote sensing of atmospheric CO2. We study snow reflectance in detail using a novel atmospheric radiative transfer model (RTM) software and a measurement-based model for snow bi-directional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) to identify how the observations could be optimized in regards of observation geometry and wavelengths. The novel simulation software for NIR-SWIR atmospheric radiative transfer, Raysca, is presented and validated. Top-of-the-atmosphere radiance simulations show that forward-viewing geometries over snow-covered surfaces yield higher radiances than the traditional nadir-viewing geometries, which could indicate the preferability of forward-viewing observation modes in the retrieval of atmospheric CO2. Similarly, atmospheric observations in the 1.6 μm CO2 absorption band might be preferable to the 2.0 μm CO2 absorption band due to higher radiances in the 1.6 μm band.