Sunglint Impact on Atmospheric Soundings from Hyperspectral Resolution Infrared Radiances

The mid-wave infrared band (3–5 μm) has been widely used for atmospheric soundings. The sunglint impact on the atmospheric parameter retrieval using this band has been neglected because the reflected radiances in this band are significantly less than those in the visible band. In this study, an investigation of sunglint impact on the atmospheric soundings was conducted with Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder observation data from 01 July to 07 July 2007 over the Atlantic Ocean. The impact of sunglint can lead to a brightness temperature increase of 1.0 K for the surface sensitive sounding channels near 4.58 μm. This contamination can indirectly cause a positive bias of 4 g kg−1 in the water vapor retrieval near the ocean surface, and it can be corrected by simply excluding those contaminated channels.