Download or read book A Research Program on Radiative Transfer Model Development in Support of the ARM Program. Progress Report No. 2, 1 March 1991--1 April 1992 written by and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research continued on the development of a radiative transfer model. This report discusses the revised continuum model. The water vapor continuum plays an important role in atmospheric radiative transfer providing increased opacity between spectral lines over the full spectral region from the microwave to the visible. The continuum has a significant influence on atmospheric fluxes and cooling rates. Additionally the continuum is important to the physical solution of the inverse problem, the remote sensing of atmospheric state to retrieve temperature, water vapor, surface properties and other state parameters. There are two components to the continuum: The self-broadened continuum, dependent on the square of the partial pressure of water vapor, and the foreign-broadened continuum, principally dependent on the product of the water vapor partial pressure and the total pressure. As a consequence the self broadened continuum tends to be more important in the lower atmosphere while the foreign broadened continuum tends to be more important in the mid to upper troposphere. To address this situation and to improve overall accuracy, we have embarked on the development of an improved water vapor continuum model.