Ocean and Polarization observations from active remote sensing: Atmospheric and Ocean science applications

In the past few years, we have demonstrated how the surface return measured by the active instruments onboard CloudSat and CALIPSO could be used to retrieve the optical depth and backscatter phase function (lidar ratio) of aerosols and ice clouds. This methodology lead to the development of a data fusion product publicly available at the ICARE archive center using the Synergized Optical Depth of Aerosols and Ice Clouds (SODA & ICE) algorithm. This algorithm, also allowing to derive ocean surface wind speed, has been extended to include dense cloud surface return to analyze aerosol and cloud properties above such clouds. This low level data fusion of CALIPSO and CloudSat ocean surface echoes has been used by several researchers to explore different research paths. Among them, we can cite: • A new characterization of the lidar ratio of cirrus clouds • The analysis of the precipitable water and development of a new Millimeter-Wave Propagation Model for the W-Band observations (EMPIRIMA) • The analysis of the lidar ratio of sea-spray aerosols, and of Aerosol multilayer lidar ratio and extinction • A contribution to the retrieval of the subsurface particulate backscatter coefficients of phytoplankton particles In this paper, we present the main features of SODA & ICE, summarizing some of the results obtained.