Uncertainty analysis of BRDF Modeling Using 6S Simulations and Monte-Carlo Method

This paper presents the method to quantitatively evaluate the uncertainty of the semi-empirical Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) model for Himawari-8/AHI. The uncertainty of BRDF modeling was affected by various issues such as assumption of model and number of observations, thus, it is difficult that evaluating the performance of BRDF modeling using simple uncertainty equations. Therefore, in this paper, Monte-Carlo method, which is most dependable method to analyze dynamic complex systems through iterative simulation, was used. The 1,000 input datasets for analyzing the uncertainty of BRDF modeling were generated using the Second Simulation of a Satellite Signal in the Solar Spectrum (6S) Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) simulation with MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) BRDF product. Then, we randomly selected data according to the number of observations from 4 to 35 in the input dataset and performed BRDF modeling using them. Finally, the uncertainty was calculated by comparing reproduced surface reflectance through the BRDF model and simulated surface reflectance using 6S RTM and expressed as bias and root-mean-square-error (RMSE). The bias was negative for all observations and channels, but was very small within 0.01. RMSE showed a tendency to decrease as the number of observations increased, and showed a stable value within 0.05 in all channels. In addition, our results show that when the viewing zenith angle is 40° or more, the RMSE tends to increase slightly. This information can be utilized in the uncertainty analysis of subsequently retrieved geophysical variables.