JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE SPECTROSCOPY & RADIATIVE TRANSFER, 101, 166-178, 2006.

A Monte Carlo method for 3D thermal infrared radiative transfer.

Y. Chen, and K. N. Liou

Abstract

A 3D Monte Carlo model for specific application to the broadband thermal radiative transfer has been developed in which the emissivities for gases and cloud particles are parameterized by using a single cubic element as the building block in 3D space. For spectral integration in the thermal infrared, the correlated k-distribution method has been used for the sorting of gaseous absorption lines in multiple-scattering atmospheres involving 3D clouds. To check the Monte-Carlo simulation, we compare a variety of ID broadband atmospheric fluxes and heating rates to those computed from the conventional plane-parallel (PP) model and demonstrate excellent agreement between the two. Comparisons of the Monte Carlo results for broadband thermal cooling rates in 3D clouds to those computed from the delta-diffusion approximation for 3D radiative transfer and the independent pixel-by-pixel approximation are subsequently carried out to understand the relative merits of these approaches.
Original I3RC web site:
Ken Yetzer
Web site contact: Tamás Várnai
Project contact: Robert Cahalan
 
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