I3RC is an ongoing project initiated in the late 1990s. Its goals include:

• comparing methods available for 3D atmospheric radiative transfer calculations
• providing benchmark results for testing and debugging 3D radiative transfer codes
• publishing an open source toolkit (community 3D Monte Carlo code)
• helping atmospheric science education by creating an archive of illustrative images and other resources on 3D radiative transfer

Participation is open to anyone interested in 3D radiative transfer. (Please sign up here.)

• The I3RC online calculator of 3D radiative transfer has been released.
• Updated consensus results of intercomparison experiments are now available for 3D radiation model testing.
• A session entitled "Three-dimensional radiative transfer in the atmosphere" was held for the June 2011 IUGG conference in Melbourne, Australia
• In addition to the source code, Mac executable files and a new script are now also available for the I3RC community model of 3-D radiative transfer
• A new image archive about 3D radiative processes is now available; any contributions are appreciated and welcomed
• Publications and publicly avaliable codes on 3D radiative transfer are now being collected

A global view of one-dimensional solar radiative transfer through oceanic water clouds In all weather and climate prediction models and in all operational passive satellite techniques to retrieve cloud microphysical properties, the interaction between cloud and sunlight is computed by assuming clouds to be plane-parallel, i.e., horizontally homogeneous. By assuming clouds and their radiative boundary conditions to be plane-parallel, the transfer of solar radiation is greatly simplified to one-dimension (the vertical). This makes radiative transfer calculations computationally fast and solut . . . [continued] More about this image High-resolution image Image archive