kcompressed atmospheric radiative transfer algorithm (kCARTA)

A new monochromatic radiative transfer algorithm based on compressed lookup tables of pre-computed atmospheric molecular absorption coefficients has been developed. These compressed look-up tables are called the kCompressed Database. Our motivation is to compute monochromatic absorption coefficients for any realistic Earth atmospheric situation (pressure, temperature, gas amount) at the same accuracy as a line-by-line code, but faster. In addition, the procedure for producing atmospheric transmittances is extremely simple, and easy to code. Although the kCompressed Database was originally developed to compute layer-to-space transmittances that are needed to produce fast transmittance models for high spectral resolution infrared temperature and humidity sounders, we have now developed a complete (non-scattering) atmospheric radiative transfer code around the kCompressed Database, called kCARTA (for kCompressed Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Algorithm). In addition, Jacobians with respect to gas amount and temperature can be rapidly performed, providing the user insight to the regions to which the measured radiance is most sensitive.