Mirjam Blum, Tilman Dinter, Astrid Bracher; in co-operation with IUP: V. Rozanov, J. Burrows

This project focuses on the extension and evaluation of the RTM SCIATRAN (developed by Vladimir Rozanov, scientist at the IUP) to model the coupled oceanic-atmospheric radiative transfer. At first, in order to retrieve accurate data products of importance for ocean biooptics and biogeochemistry, SCIATRAN a former purely atmospheric RTM, was extended by taking radiative processes at the atmosphere-water interface, as well as within water accurately into account. In order to validate this extension of the model, several comparisons with in-situ and satellite observations and simulations used for testing other radiative transfer models have been performed (Blum et al. submitted). Currently, as one important step to show the applicability of SCIATRAN model to resolve ocean optics, comparisons to HydroLight (Mobley and Sundman, 2008), a widely used RTM within the ocean optics community are performed. The next steps are to use the extended SCIATRAN RTM for evaluation and optimization of the PhytoDOAS phytoplankton group retrieval, other upcoming hyperspectral ocean colour products. In co-operation with the DOAS group of the IUP, the extended SCIATRAN RTM will also be used to optimize atmospheric trace gas retrieval using UV-VIS satellite data over the ocean.