Empirical Investigation of Three Iterative Methods for Inverting the Radiative Transfer Equation,

摘要

Three iterative methods for inverting the integral form of the radiative transfer equation to obtain temperature profiles from satellite infrared radiance measurements were subjected to a detailed empirical investigation. The methods are (a) minimum information method, (b) Smith's direct method, and (c) Duncan's modification of Smith's direct method. Each method was examined for (a) rate of convergence, (b) frequency response to differences between the first guess temperature profile and the true temperature profile, and (c) the effects of noise on the radiance measurements. Details of the investigation and the results are presented in the report.