Combined neural network/Phillips–Tikhonov approach to aerosol retrievals over...

Di Noia, A., Otto Hasekamp, L. Wu, B. van Diedenhoven, B. Cairns, and J. Yorks (2017), Combined neural network/Phillips–Tikhonov approach to aerosol retrievals over land from the NASA Research Scanning Polarimeter, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 10, 4235-4252, doi:10.5194/amt-10-4235-2017.
Abstract: 

In this paper, an algorithm for the retrieval of aerosol and land surface properties from airborne spectropolarimetric measurements – combining neural networks and an iterative scheme based on Phillips–Tikhonov regularization – is described. The algorithm – which is an extension of a scheme previously designed for ground-based retrievals – is applied to measurements from the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) on board the NASA ER-2 aircraft. A neural network, trained on a large data set of synthetic measurements, is applied to perform aerosol retrievals from real RSP data, and the neural network retrievals are subsequently used as a first guess for the Phillips–Tikhonov retrieval. The resulting algorithm appears capable of accurately retrieving aerosol optical thickness, fine-mode effective radius and aerosol layer height from RSP data. Among the advantages of using a neural network as initial guess for an iterative algorithm are a decrease in processing time and an increase in the number of converging retrievals.

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Research Program: 
Radiation Science Program (RSP)