Radiative transfer in the cloudy atmosphere

By Bernhard Mayer. 2009

312 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Radiative transfer in clouds is a challenging task, due to their high spatial and temporal variability which is unrivaled by any other atmospheric species. Clouds are among the main modulators of radiation along its path through the Earth’s atmosphere. The cloud feedback is the largest source of uncertainty in current climate model predictions. Cloud observation from satellites, on a global scale, with appropriate temporal and spatial sampling is therefore one of the top aims of current Earth observation missions. In this chapter three-dimensional methods for radiative transfer in cloudy atmospheres are described, which allow to study cloud-radiation interaction at the level needed to better understand the fundamental details driving climate and to better exploit remote sensing algorithms. The Monte Carlo technique is introduced which allows to handle nearly arbitrarily complex atmospheric conditions. The accuracy of the method is discussed by comparison between different models and with observations. Finally, we show some examples and discuss under which conditions three-dimensional methods are actually needed and when commonly-used one-dimensional approximations are applicable. This chapter builds upon the excellent overview of one-dimensional radiative transfer in ERCA Volume 3 [B. Pinty and M.M. Verstraete, ERCA 3, 67 (1998)].

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d0fcf16c706922e6f268bcc684e30b337be08c08

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Citations in the corpus

New secondary-scattering correction in DISORT with increased efficiency for forward scattering (2011, methodology): “For an independent comparison, we ran Monte Carlo simulations for a subset of the setups with the MYSTIC code [4] using the variance reduction method VROOM [13], which is also part of libRadtran.”
The impact of aerosols on polarized sky radiance: model development, validation, and applications (2009, unknown): “For general questions about the Monte Carlo technique and in particular about libRadtran and MYSTIC the reader is referred to the literature (Marchuk et al., 1980; Collins et al., 1972; Mayer, 2009; Marshak and Davis, 2005; Cahalan et al., 2005).”
The Monte Carlo atmospheric radiative transfer model McArtim: Introduction and validation of Jacobians and 3D features (2011, unknown): “[7–13].”
The libRadtran software package for radiative transfer calculations (version 2.0.1) (2015, methodology): “The most comprehensive solver in libRadtran is the Monte Carlo model MYSTIC (Mayer, 2009), which may be used to calculate (polarized) radiances, irradiance, and actinic fluxes in the solar and thermal spectral regions.”
Direct normal irradiance related definitions and applications: The circumsolar issue (2014, methodology): “5 have been performed with a specifically modified version of the MYSTIC Monte Carlo radiative transfer model that allows, notably, a precise description of the extraterrestrial sunshape to be considered (Reinhardt et al., 2014; Mayer, 2009).”
Benchmark results in vector atmospheric radiative transfer (2010, methodology): “The differences between MYSTIC and SCIATRAN are in all cases smaller than the Monte-Carlo noise.”