Dr. Meredith Kupinski
Associate Professor, Optical Sciences
The University of Arizona
Monday, March 24, 2025 – 10:00 – 10:50 AM
Harshbarger Building, Room 118A
Abstract
Polarization plays a crucial role in studying Earth’s atmosphere. While sunlight is unpolarized, scattering and emission processes in the atmosphere induce partial polarization across different wavebands of the electromagnetic spectrum. This propagating partially polarized light interacts with aerosols and clouds, producing a distinct polarization signature that differs from molecular sky models. Measuring polarized radiation across multiple angles and wavebands reduces degeneracy in the retrievals of cloud and aerosol optical properties. The University of Arizona Wyant College of Optical Sciences’ Polarization Lab has over a decade of experience designing and deploying polarimetric remote sensing. This colloquium will provide an understanding of the sky’s polarization signature and share our observations from: the Ultraviolet Linear Stokes Imaging Polarimeter, the Infrared Channeled Spectropolarimeter, and the Channeled Infrared Polarimeter.