Application of Ground Transportable Lidar for the Calibration and Validation of the Nasa’s Glory Aerosol Polarimety Sensor Measurement

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glory mission, a remote sensing Earth-orbiting observatory, which is now scheduled for launch in October of 2010 [1], as part of the A-train constellation (705 km altitude, 98.2 degrees inclination) Sun-Synchronous orbit. The Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS), the primary science instrument onboard Glory, will collect multi-angle, multi-spectral photopolarimetric measurements of the atmosphere along the satellite ground track over a broad visible and near-infrared spectral range, allowing precise aerosol retrievals. Validation of these APS retrievals poses two challenges. First, due to the lack of cross track coverage beyond its nominal instantaneous field of view (IFOV) of 5.6km, collocation of APS measurements with those collected from the ground will be problematic. Secondly, the accuracy of APS aerosol retrievals will likely not be matched by most ground-based instruments [2].