OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF ASIAN DUST ESTIMATED FROM GROUND BASED POLARIZATION MEASUREMENTS

Polarimetric measurements of the sky radiation by the PSR-I000, which is the multi-spectral polarimeter developed by the Opt Research Corporation and has the same wavelength regions (443nm, 490nm, 565nm, 670nm, 765nm and 865nm) as the ADEOSII/POLDER sensor, have been carried out at the ground station in Kanazawa city, Japan from March to May. First of all, the wavelength dependency of degrees of polarization is examined and it is shown that degrees of polarization measured under the hazy dust cloud are lower than those measured in the clear sky and decrease as the wavelength increases. Next, a new method for estimating optical properties, such as the optical thickness, the number size distribution and the refractive index, of the Asian dust and the ground reflectance from degrees of polarization measured by PSR-I000 is described. Finally, this method is applied to polarization data acquired on April 15,2002. As a result, it is shown that our estimation algorithm provides a good result.