Numerical results for polarized light scattering in a spherical atmosphere

Korkin, S.; Yang, E.-S.; Spurr, R.; Emde, C.; Zhai, P.; Krotkov, N.; Vasilkov, A. und Lyapustin, A. (2022): Numerical results for polarized light scattering in a spherical atmosphere. In: Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer, Bd. 287, 108194

Abstract

We report numerical results for polarized light reflection from the top of a Rayleigh scattering spherical atmosphere with height-dependent single scattering albedo over a dark surface. Michael Mishchenko considered this scenario back in the 1990's, for a plane-parallel atmosphere of unit optical thickness (OT = 1), for which radiance errors arising from neglecting polarization reaches their highest values. To further extend Mishchenko's results, we consider a value of OT = 0.25, for which the effect of atmospheric curvature is pronounced. New results are generated using three state-of-the art radiative transfer (RT) codes. These are: the MYSTIC and MCSSA models, which simulate light scattering in a true-spherical atmosphere using Monte Carlo methods;and the discrete ordinate code VLIDORT, operating with a new multiple-scatter spherical correction designed to deliver reasonable approximations to spherical-medium scattering. In this work, we report results for both single and multiple scattering;this will help to support the validation of existing and future polarized spherical RT codes, especially those using approximative methods to deal with sphericity. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Physik
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 530 Physik
• ISSN: 0022-4073
• Sprache: Englisch