S. Douté, X. Ceamanos, T. Appéré
We propose a new method to retrieve the optical depth of Martian aerosols (AOD) from OMEGA and CRISM hyperspectral imagery at a reference wavelength of 1 micron. Our method works even if the underlying surface is completely made of minerals, corresponding to a low contrast between surface and atmospheric dust, while being observed at a fixed geometry. Minimizing the effect of the surface reflectance properties on the AOD retrieval is the second principal asset of our method. The method is based on the parametrization of the radiative coupling between particles and gas determining, with local altimetry, acquisition geometry, and the meteorological situation, the absorption band depth of gaseous CO2. Because the last three factors can be predicted to some extent, we can define a new parameter beta that expresses specifically the strength of the gas-aerosols coupling while directly depending on the AOD. Combining estimations of beta and top of the atmosphere radiance values extracted from the observed spectra within the CO2 gas band at 2 microns, we evaluate the AOD and the surface reflectance by radiative transfer inversion. One should note that practically beta can only be estimated for surfaces spectrally dominated by minerals and/or H2O ice. Validation of the proposed method shows that it is reliable if two conditions are fulfilled: (i) the observation conditions provide an airmass that is large enough >3.5 (ii) the aerosol are vertically well mixed in the atmosphere. Experiments conducted on OMEGA nadir looking observations as well as CRISM EPF produce very satisfactory results. Finally in a companion paper the method is applied to monitoring atmospheric dust spring activity at high southern latitudes on Mars using OMEGA.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0690
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