Evaluation of the aerosol scattering phase function from PGAMS observation of sky path radiance

A knowledge of the spectral and geometrical distribution of sky path radiance at the time a remote sensing image of the Earth's surface is acquired can greatly improve the application of atmospheric correction and vicarious calibration techniques. The focus of this investigation is to evaluate the sensitivity of the radiance exiting the bottom and top of the atmosphere to the representation of the aerosol single-scattering phase function for these applications. Hyperspectral almucantar sky path radiance measurements obtained with the Portable Ground-based Atmospheric Monitoring System (PGAMS) are compared to synthetic spectra generated by MODTRAN3.