SBDART: A Research and Teaching Software Tool for Plane-Parallel Radiative Transfer in the Earth's Atmosphere

Paul Ricchiazzi
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Shiren Yang
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Catherine Gautier
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David Sowle
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SBDART is a software tool that computes plane-parallel radiative transfer in clear and cloudy conditions within the earth's atmosphere and at the surface. All important processes that affect the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared radiation fields are included. The code is a marriage of a sophisticated discrete ordinate radiative transfer module, low-resolution atmospheric transmission models, and Mie scattering results for light scattering by water droplets and ice crystals. The code is well suited for a wide variety of atmospheric radiative energy balance and remote sensing studies. It is designed so that it can be used for case studies as well as sensitivity analysis. For small sets of computations or teaching applications it is available on the World Wide Web with a user-friendly interface. For sensitivity studies requiring many computations it is available by anonymous FTP as a well organized and documented FORTRAN 77 source code.

*Institute for Computational Earth System Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California.

+Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California.

#Mission Research Corporation, Santa Barbara, California.

Corresponding author address: Dr. Paul Ricchiazzi, Institute for Computational Earth System Service, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3060. E-mail: paul@icess.ucsb.edu

SBDART is a software tool that computes plane-parallel radiative transfer in clear and cloudy conditions within the earth's atmosphere and at the surface. All important processes that affect the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared radiation fields are included. The code is a marriage of a sophisticated discrete ordinate radiative transfer module, low-resolution atmospheric transmission models, and Mie scattering results for light scattering by water droplets and ice crystals. The code is well suited for a wide variety of atmospheric radiative energy balance and remote sensing studies. It is designed so that it can be used for case studies as well as sensitivity analysis. For small sets of computations or teaching applications it is available on the World Wide Web with a user-friendly interface. For sensitivity studies requiring many computations it is available by anonymous FTP as a well organized and documented FORTRAN 77 source code.

*Institute for Computational Earth System Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California.

+Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California.

#Mission Research Corporation, Santa Barbara, California.

Corresponding author address: Dr. Paul Ricchiazzi, Institute for Computational Earth System Service, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3060. E-mail: paul@icess.ucsb.edu
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