LOWTRAN7 Aerosol Models and Atmosphere Profile Data

LOWTRAN7 is an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) atmosphere radiance and transmittance model published August, 1988.

LOWTRAN 7 is a low-resolution propagation model and computer code for predicting atmospheric transmittance and sky thermal and scattered radiance from 0 to 50,000 cm- 1 at a resolution of 20 cm-1. Most of the aerosol models are based on the LOWTRAN 6 (1983) model, with the exception being the wind-driven desert sand aerosols. These scripts and data are:

* The builtin 'canned' atmosphere profiles (US76, midlatitude summer, midlatitude winter, subarctic summer, subarctic winter, and tropical) and tools to produce the AFRL Handbook of Geophysics and the Space Environment (1985) Chapter 18 Section 1 Atmosphere Gases plots (Figures 18.1 through 18.6)

* The builtin 'canned' aerosols including the extinction, absorption, scattering, size distributions, scaling for altitude, relative humidity effects. Scripts are provided to plot the Figures 18.10 - 18.12 and 18.14 - 18.27 of the AFRL Handbook Section 18.2, and Figures 8 - 13 of the LOWTRAN6 User Manual.

* The wind-dependent desert aerosol model is included with a script to generate plots of extinction, attenuation, and single scattered albedo.

* Scripts to calculate the Table 18.2 and 18.4 of the AFRL Handbook are included.

A pdf of Chapter 18 of the AFRL Handbook is included in the download.

This is a work-in-progress so check back if you find it useful.
TODO:
* Account for polarization.
* Add clouds and precipitation models.
* Compute vertical profiles of volume and range extinction coefficients.
* Compute the scattering and absorption coefficients from MIE theory rather than using the pretabulated results (being able to recreate the tabulated results in Lowtran7).

NOTE: Some of the atmosphere profiles are a little different since the book was published in 1985, and the profiles are from FASCODE3 (around the late 1980s).