Laser Transmission Through Cirrus Clouds

摘要

Laser transmission model development. We developed a number of 2D radiative transfer models based on the successive-order-of-scattering approach for the computation of airborne high-energy laser transmission and backscattering through homogeneous and inhomogeneous thin cirrus clouds in both plane-parallel and spherical geometries. These models took into account the relative positions of aircraft, target, and cirrus clouds in the atmospheres. We investigated the sensitivity of laser transmission and backscattering on variation of the cloud optical depth, particle size, and cloud-base height, as well as the positions of aircraft and target. We also evaluated the effects of the earth's sphericity on laser transmission and backscattering. A paper describing our detailed research findings has been published in Applied Optics (Ou, et al. 2002). Our present research involves the theoretical formulation of a three-dimensional direct and first-order transmission-backscattering model for thin cirrus.