• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.99-120
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• 1997

Solar radiation is scattered and absorbed atmospheric compositions in the atmosphere before it reaches the surface and, then after reflected at the surface, until it reaches the satellite sensor. Therefore, consideration of the radiative transfer through the atmosphere is essential for the quantitave analysis of the satellite sensed data, specially at shortwave region. This study examined a feasibility of using radiative transfer code for estimating the atmospheric effects on satellite remote sensing data. To do this, the flux simulated by LOWTRAN7 is compared with CAGEX data in shortwave region. The CAGEX (CERES/ARM/GEWEX Experiment) data provides a dataset of (1) atmospheric soundings, aerosol optical depth and albedo, (2) ARM(Aerosol Radiation Measurement) radiation flux measured by pyrgeometers, pyrheliometer and shadow pyranometer and (3) broadband shortwave flux simulated by Fu-Liou's radiative transfer code. To simulate aerosol effect using the radiative transfer model, the aerosol optical characteristics were extracted from observed aerosol column optical depth, Spinhirne's experimental vertical distribution of scattering coefficient and D'Almeida's statistical atmospheric aerosols radiative characteristics. Simulation of LOWTRAN7 are performed on 31 sample of completely clear days. LOWTRAN's result and CAGEX data are compared on upward, downward direct, downward diffuse solar flux at the surface and upward solar flux at the top of the atmosphere(TOA). The standard errors in LOWTRAN7 simulation of the above components are within 5% except for the downward diffuse solar flux at the surface(6.9%). The results show that a large part of error in LOWTRAN7 flux simulation appeared in the diffuse component due to scattering mainly by atmispheric aerosol. For improving the accuracy of radiative transfer simulation by model, there is a need to provide better information about the radiative charateristrics of atmospheric aerosols.