Speaker
Description
We give an overview of the Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) used in the bright limb retrieval of the ALTIUS project.
The chosen RTM is SMART-G, which is an RTM of Monte Carlo type, owned by HYGEOS, Euratechnologies, 165 Avenue de Bretagne, 59000 Lille, France, Tel: + 33 (0) 3 20 08 24 98, E-mail: contact@hygeos.com.
SMART-G is BISA's preferred Radiative Transfer (RT) software tool for the ALTIUS project. SMART-G serves as the core of the forward model, used in the L2 processing chain for the ALTIUS data stream.
SMART-G is a state-of-the-art RTM, which computes Stokes vector fields in a spherical shell atmosphere. It includes polarisation, refraction, multiple Rayleigh scattering, absorption by gases and scattering and absorption by aerosols, having arbitrary Mueller matrix phase functions. It also supports non-homogeneous, spectral and polarising Earth albedo models.
SMART-G runs on Nvidia GPUs. It is written partly in Python and partly in CUDA C. It is installed at BISA on several dedicated Linux machine with industrial quality, high performance GPUs.
SMART-G is driven by the "ALTIUS Interface to SMART-G", a collection of 30 python modules developed at BISA, which provides RT support for the ALTIUS project. This is a very general and user friendly tool, which frees the user from having to deal with the specific details of how to set up the input structures for and how to call SMART-G. The Interface main features will be introduced.
