The Havemann-Taylor Fast Radiative Transfer Code: Exact fast radiative transfer for scattering atmospheres using Principal Components (PCs)

The Havemann-Taylor Fast Radiative Transfer Code (HT-FRTC) has been developed for the simulation of highly spectrally resolved measurements from satellite based (i.e. Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), Atmospheric infrared Sounder (AIRS)) and airborne (i.e. Atmospheric Research Interferometer Evaluation System (ARIES)) instruments. The use of principle components enables the calculation of a complete spectrum in less than a second. The principal components are derived from a diverse training set of atmospheres and surfaces and contain their spectral characteristics in a highly compressed form. For any given atmosphere/surface, the HT-FRTC calculates the weightings (also called scores) of a few hundred principal components based on selected monochromatic radiative transfer calculations, which is far cheaper than thousands of channel radiance calculations. By intercomparison with line-by-line and other fast models the HT-FRTC has been shown to be accurate. The HT-FRTC has been successfully applied to simultaneous variational retrievals of atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles, surface temperature and surface emissivity over land. This is the subject of another presentation at this conference. The HT-FRTC has now also been extended to include an exact treatment of scattering by aerosols/clouds. The radiative transfer problem is solved using a discrete ordinate method (DISORT). Modelling results at high-spectral resolution for non-clear sky atmospheres obtained with the HT-FRTC are presented.