Specular reflection of sunlight from wavy ocean surfaces and the albedo effect on satellite orbits. I. A statistical model.

Details Specular reflection of sunlight from wavy ocean surfaces and the albedo effect on satellite orbits. I. A statistical model. Specular reflection of sunlight from wavy ocean surfaces and the albedo effect on satellite orbits. I. A statistical model.

Jun 1995

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995a%26a...298..307v&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.298, p.307

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

7

Celestial Mechanics, Space Probes, Radiation Mechanisms, Earth

Scientific paper

Radiation pressure from sunlight reflected by the Earth's surface and atmosphere affects in a detectable way the orbit of laser-tracked Earth satellites or spacecraft carrying microaccelerometric devices. In particular, long-term perturbations arise as a consequence of radiation specularly reflected from oceans. Most previous models of this effect modelled the ocean surface as a perfectly smooth spherical mirror, such that the reflected light beam is seen at the satellite as collimated and coming from a specific point of the Earth's surface. We now improve on these simplified models, taking into account that the wavy geometry of the water surface results into a finite aperture of the reflected light beam and into an extended (and non-uniform) image of the Sun seen on the surface itself from the satellite's position. First we use geometrical optics and a statistical description of the orientation of small-scale reflecting surface elements to define an averaged Fresnel-type reflection coefficient giving the amount of reflected radiation as a function of incidence angle. Then we compare the results of two possible methods to derive the local radiative field at the satellite: (i) using this averaged reflection coefficient but assuming again a perfectly spherical surface; (ii) analyzing in detail the distribution of ray geometries from the whole region which contributes reflected sunlight, with the method outlined in Vokrouhlicky et al. (1993c). The results show that the mirror-like model somewhat overestimates the perturbative effects of reflected sunlight for LAGEOS-type satellites. The extent of this overestimate may range up to about 40%, depending on the assumed statistical properties of the ocean surface geometry, and increases when the effective aperture of the "reflection lobe" is larger.

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