The monitoring capability of a polarized instrument (POLDER) under high aerosol loading conditions over China is investigated. The aerosol optical thickness (AOT), which infers the aerosol burden, is used to measure the satellite monitoring capabilities. AOT products retrieved from POLDER on low aerosol loading days, and products from a radiometric instrument (MODIS) on high and low aerosol loa...

The POLDER instrument is devoted to global observations of the solar radiation reflected by the earthatmosphere system. Algorithms of the “Earth Radiation Budget and Clouds” processing line implemented at the French Space Center are applied to ADEOS-POLDER data. First results on derived cloud properties are presented from POLDER level 2 data of 10 November 1996 and level 3 products of June 1997...

The Casimir-Polder force is an important long-range interaction involved in adsorption and desorption of molecules in fluids. We explore Casimir-Polder interactions between methane molecules in water, and between a molecule in water near SiO(2) and hexane surfaces. Inclusion of the finite molecular size in the expression for the Casimir-Polder energy leads to estimates of the dispersion contrib...

POLDER is a CNES instrument on-board ADEOS polar orbiting satellite, which was succesfully launched in august 1996. In november 1996, POLDER entered its nominal acquisition phase and functionned perfectly until ADEOS early end of service in june 1997. POLDER is a multispectral imaging radiometer/polarimeter designed to collect global and repetitive observations of the solar radiation reflected ...

New ports are mostly constructed on low lying coastal areas or shallow coastal waters. The quay wall and terminal yard are raised to a level well above mean sea level to assure flood safety. The resulting ‘conventional terminal’ requires large volumes of fill material often dredged from the sea, which is costly. The terminal yard of a ‘polder terminal’ lies below the outside water level and is ...

Four ice-crystal models are tested by use of ice-cloud reflectances derived from Along Track Scanning Radiometer-2 (ATSR-2) and Polarization and Directionality of Earth's Reflectances (POLDER) radiance measurements. The analysis is based on dual-view ATSR-2 total reflectances of tropical cirrus and POLDER global-scale total and polarized reflectances of ice clouds at as many as 14 viewing direc...

Excess nitrogen (N) export from lowland artificial watersheds (polders) is often assumed to be a major contributor to the cultural eutrophication of downstream aquatic ecosystems. However, the complex transport processes characterizing lowland areas pose significant challenges in accurately quantifying their actual role. In this study, we developed a dynamic model to track N sources and transpo...

Decision taking is discussed in the context of the role it may play for various types of agents, and it is contrasted with action determination. Some remarks are made about the role of decision taking and action determination in the ongoing debate concerning the reverse polder development of the hertogin Hedwige polder.

Recently the Lifshitz theory of dispersion forces was extended for the case of an atom (molecule) interacting with a plane surface of a uniaxial crystal or with a long solid cylinder or cylindrical shell made of isotropic material or uniaxial crystal. The obtained results are applicable to nanosystems. In particular, we investigate the Casimir-Polder interaction between hydrogen atoms (molecule...

Aerosol properties above clouds have been retrieved over the South East Atlantic Ocean during the fire season 2006 using satellite observations from POLDER (Polarization and Directionality of Earth Reflectances). From June to October, POLDER has observed a mean Above-Cloud Aerosol Optical Thickness (ACAOT) of 0.28 and a mean Above-Clouds Single Scattering Albedo (ACSSA) of 0.87 at 550 nm. These...