Parameterized code SHARM-3D for radiative transfer over inhomogeneous surfaces.

The code SHARM-3D, developed for fast and accurate simulations of the monochromatic radiance at the top of the atmosphere over spatially variable surfaces with Lambertian or anisotropic reflectance, is described. The atmosphere is assumed to be laterally uniform across the image and to consist of two layers with aerosols contained in the bottom layer. The SHARM-3D code performs simultaneous calculations for all specified incidence-view geometries and multiple wavelengths in one run. The numerical efficiency of the current version of code is close to its potential limit and is achieved by means of two innovations. The first is the development of a comprehensive precomputed lookup table of the three-dimensional atmospheric optical transfer function for various atmospheric conditions. The second is the use of a linear kernel model of the land surface bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) in our algorithm that has led to a fully parameterized solution in terms of the surface BRF parameters. The code is also able to model inland lakes and rivers. The water pixels are described with the Nakajima-Tanaka BRF model of wind-roughened water surface with a Lambertian offset, which is designed to model approximately the reflectance of suspended matter and of a shallow lake or river bottom.