The retrieval of the effective radius of snow grains and control of snow pollution with GLI data

Presents a new algorithm to retrieve the effective snow grain size and pollution amount, which employs no a priori suggestion of snow grain shapes. The algorithm uses the multispectral information provided by a satellite optical instrument, particularly by GLI. In so doing, the authors use the snow model as non-spherical close-packed grains instead of the common model of independent spherical scatterers; the geometrical optics approximation instead of the diffraction theory; and the asymptotic solution instead of the radiative transfer equation