AUTHOR=Gilerson Alexander , Herrera-Estrella Eder , Agagliate Jacopo , Foster Robert , Gossn Juan I. , Dessailly David , Kwiatkowska Ewa 

TITLE=Determining the primary sources of uncertainty in the retrieval of marine remote sensing reflectance from satellite ocean color sensors II. Sentinel 3 OLCI sensors

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Remote Sensing

VOLUME=4

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/remote-sensing/articles/10.3389/frsen.2023.1146110

DOI=10.3389/frsen.2023.1146110

ISSN=2673-6187

ABSTRACT=<p>Uncertainties in remote sensing reflectance <inline-formula id="inf1"><mml:math id="m1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>R</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mi>r</mml:mi><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> for the Ocean Color sensors strongly affect the quality of the retrieval of concentrations of chlorophyll-a and water properties. By comparison of data from SNPP VIIRS and several AERONET-OC stations and MOBY, it was recently shown that the main uncertainties come from the Rayleigh-type spectral component (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B20">Gilerson et al., 2022</xref>), which was associated with small variability in the Rayleigh optical thickness in the atmosphere and/or its calculation. In addition, water variability spectra proportional to <inline-formula id="inf2"><mml:math id="m2" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>R</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mi>r</mml:mi><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> were found to play a significant role in coastal waters, while other components including radiances from aerosols and glint were small. This work expands on the previous study, following a similar procedure and applying the same model for the characterization of uncertainties to the Sentinel-3A and B OLCI sensors. It is shown that the primary sources of uncertainties are the same as for VIIRS, i.e., dominated by the Rayleigh-type component, with the total uncertainties for OLCI sensors typically higher in coastal areas than for VIIRS.</p>