Atmospheric and surface backscatter: dynamic range and spatial variability effects on lidar design and performance

Although nearly all the airborne and orbiting active laser sensors to date have operated at near nadir pointing angles, in either lidar or altimeter mode, the authors anticipate dual-mode instruments such as GLAS to emerge and impact the remote sensing community in the next decade. They discuss the variability which off-nadir scanning brings to the measurement concepts-variability which can engender new measurement capabilities as well as cause interpretational problems. In that context they discuss the dynamic range of surface reflectance (backscatter) over water and various land surfaces, including dependence on nadir angle. A new measurement opportunity which exists using scanning lidar systems optimized for wide dynamic range is the measurement of surface wind over oceans