Abstract

Clouds' radiation characteristics are very important in clouds scene simulation, weather forecasting, pattern recognition, and other fields. Radiation of a cloud mainly comes from its multiple scattering. A new algorithm to calculate multiple scattering, called build-up factor algorithm, is proposed in this paper. In this algorithm, a modified gamma distribution is assumed to describe droplets distribution inside a cloud, then the radiation transport equation is calculated to get the solution of single scattering, and finally, a build-up factor is defined to estimate the multiple scattering contributions. This algorithm considers both single scattered radiance and multiple scattered radiance and needs shorter computing time. It can be used in real time simulations.

© 2006 Chinese Optics Letters

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