Detectability of Surface and Atmospheric Signatures in the Disk-averaged Spectra of the Earth

Details Detectability of Surface and Atmospheric Signatures in the Disk-averaged Spectra of the Earth Detectability of Surface and Atmospheric Signatures in the Disk-averaged Spectra of the Earth

May 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agusm.a21a..06t&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #A21A-06

Biology

5210 Planetary Atmospheres, Clouds, And Hazes (0343), 5704 Atmospheres (0343, 1060), 0343 Planetary Atmospheres (5210, 5405, 5704), 0406 Astrobiology And Extraterrestrial Materials

Scientific paper

We have developed a spatially and spectrally-resolved computer model of the Earth to explore the observational sensitivity to atmospheric and surface properties, and biosignatures, in disk-averaged spectra.This comprehensive model can also be used to analyze and interpret Earthshine data.Atmospheric, cloud and surface properties from existing observations and modeling studies are input to the model, which uses the Spectral Mapping Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (SMART) model to generate UV to far-IR spatially resolved high-resolution synthetic spectra. Disk-averaged synthetic spectra generated by the model were validated in the visible/Near-IR spectral range against disk- averaged Earth observations taken by the Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (MGS- TES),the ESA Mars Express Omega instrument, and ground-based observations of earthshine reflected from the unilluminated portion of the Moon. Several atmospheric species can be identified in disk-averaged Earth spectra, and potentially detected depending on the wavelength range and resolving power of the instrument. At optical wavelengths (0.4 to 0.9 microns) O3, H2O, O2 and oxygen dimer (O2)2 are clearly apparent. CH4, N2O, CO2, O3 and H2O produce features in the near-IR (1 to 5 microns). The modeled spectra are also strongly phase-dependent, and a comprehensive 3-D model is needed to accurately model the observations. To explore the detectability of planetary characteristics, we simulated cases not available from the observational data sets, including an experiment to determine the detectability of the vegetation red edge as a function of planetary cloud cover. Our modeling shows that while land surface cover of vegetation on Earth produces a strong disk-averaged signal for a cloudless planet, even when the signal is averaged over the daily time scale, the detectability is significantly reduced in the presence of clouds, but is also a function of the observed planetary phase.

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