title: Effects of surface reflectance on skylight polarization measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory.
abstract: An all-sky imaging polarimeter was deployed in summer 2008 to the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii to study clear-sky atmospheric skylight polarization. The imager operates in five wavebands in the visible and near infrared spectrum and has a fisheye lens for all-sky viewing. This paper describes the deployment and presents comparisons of the degree of skylight polarization observed to similar data observed by Coulson with a principal-plane scanning polarimeter in the late 1970s. In general, the results compared favorably to those of Coulson. In addition, we present quantitative results correlating a variation of the maximum degree of polarization over a range of 70-85% to fluctuation in underlying surface reflectance and upwelling radiance data from the GOES satellite.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Montana State University, 610 Cobleigh Hall, Bozeman, MT 59717, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Dahlberg
authors.forename: Nathan J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Pust
authors.forename: Joseph A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Shaw