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Robert Pincus edited this page Sep 22, 2021 · 15 revisions

RTE+RRTMGP is a set of codes for computing radiative fluxes in planetary atmospheres.

RTE computes radiative fluxes given values of optical properties, source functions, and boundary conditions.

RRTMGP computes the optical properties and source functions of the gaseous atmosphere given the distribution of temperature, pressure, and gas concentrations within the atmosphere.

RTE+RRTMGP is a collaboration between the University of Colorado and Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. with support from a growing community. Please contact Robert Pincus and Eli Mlawer at rrtmgp@aer.com or open an issue on this Github site.

In the Fortran 2003 interface documented here each of the italicized phrases above corresponds to a class which bundles some combination of code and data.

Spectral discretization

The spectral properties of the atmosphere and the source functions depend on electromagnetic wavelength (or frequency or wavenumber). RTE treats this spectral dependence by dividing the spectrum into one or more bands, each of which represents a continuous set of wavelengths/frequencies. Bands may be further sub-divided into g-points (the language is borrowed from k-distributions). Each g-point is treated as a independent psudo-monchromatic calculation but there is no inherent mapping between g-points and wavelengths; the sum over g-points is the band-average value.

The bands defined by RRTMGP cover the full spectrum of radiation emitted by the Sun and Earth: these are broadband calculations. In RRTMGP the bands are continuous so that the ending wavelength of one band is the starting wavelength of the next.

Table of contents

Workflow

Conventions

RTE (Radiative Transfer for Energetics)

RRTMGP (RRTM for GCM Applications - Parallel)

Migrating from RRTMG

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