Horizontal Irradiance Model for Self-Consistent Radiative Transfer Approach in Natural Water With Arbitrary Values of Inherent Optical Properties

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to obtain the simplest analytic solution to the radiative transfer problem in a shallow water with wavy surface and reflecting bottom that takes into account all orders of scattering inside water as well as all orders of scattering (or reflection) from bottom and sea surface. The approach used here is a self-consistent approach (SCA) 1-3 that was originally devised to obtain upward and downward irradiance in shallow sea with arbitrary inherent optical properties. Potentially SCA is capable to produce radiance of total light distribution in shallow sea because the main SCA radiative transfer equation has a source term that depends only on radiance of a source light and irradiance of scattered light. This potentiality was utilized in this paper to obtain total radiance of light inside shallow sea and horizontal irradiance that can be used for estimation of horizontal visibility. Calculation of horizontal visibility is considered to be the next task and can be easily performed using the results obtained in this paper.