SMART

SMART is an assemblage of radiative transfer modules aimed specifically at simulating infrared imagery of the atmosphere, clouds, aerosols, gases and particles. The purpose of SMART is to use industry standard radiative transfer codes (eg. MODTRAN) to provide background radiances as input to our in-house discrete ordinates scattering model (DOM) for atmospheric infrared radiation calculations. SMART currently utilises the output from MODTRAN as input to our DOM code (DMC) with a user selectable path geometry. The target can consist of several different atmospheric substances, including varieties of volcanic ash, 12 types of cloud particle, windblown dust, smoke as well as all commonly encountered atmospheric gases. SMART includes a parametric module for generating the spectral complex refractive (SCR) indices of volcanic ash based on its SiO₂ and/or NBO/T content. An infrared instrument software module (I²M) receives output from SMART allowing a realistic simulation and assessment of what an infrared camera would image. Optical and radiometric models for several infrared imaging systems are included in I²M.

SMART simulation for a cirrus cloud deck at 10 km altitude. Note that the shape of the spectrum is the key factor–a two band imager will not be able to identify ice crystals.