Development of a radiative flux evaluation program with a 3-D Monte Carlo radiative transfer code

In this paper, we have developed a three-dimensional (3D) Monte Carlo radiative transfer code that can treat a broadband solar flux calculation implemented with k-distribution parameters [1]. We used this code for generating the radiative flux profile and heating rate profile in the atmosphere including broken clouds. In order to construct 3-D extinction coefficient fields, we tried following three methods: 1) Minimum cloud Information Deviation Profiling Method (MIDPM), 2) numerical simulations by a non-hydrostatic model with bin cloud microphysics model and 3) idealized stochastic clouds generated by randomized extinction coefficient distribution and regularly-distributed tiled clouds. Using these constructed 3-D cloud systems, we calculated the radiation field by our Monte Carlo radiative transfer code at wavelengths of 0.5, 1.6 and 2.1 microns. We then compared the results with Plane Parallel Approximation (PPA) and a reflectivity of 3-D with Independent Pixel Approximation (IPA). In the case of wavelength 0.5 microns, as expected, all the discrepancies between 3-D clouds and equivalent IPA clouds are smaller than the discrepancies between 3-D clouds and equivalent PPA clouds. At maximum the reflectivity difference for the PPA and IPA is about equal to fluxes of 30 Wm−2 and 10 Wm−2, respectively.