Radiative transfer through an arbitrarily thick, scattering atmosphere

Abstract

A method is presented for solving the equation of radiative transfer in a vertically inhomogeneous planetary atmosphere. The method, based on the spherical harmonics expansion, can be used to compute models with an arbitrarily large optical thickness and any scattering phase function. It is extremely efficient, requiring the equivalent of only two matrix multiplications per layer. This efficiency combined with its stability makes the method useful for computing realistic models of planetary atmospheres. To illustrate the range of validity of this method, we compute the plane albedo from model atmospheres containing clouds with optical thicknesses ranging from 0 to 10 6.