PACE Technical Report Series, Volume 15

PyTOAST generates simulated top-of-atmosphere Level-1B files for the PACE Ocean Color Instrument (OCI). PyTOAST utilizes retrieved surface and atmospheric properties and top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiances from MODIS and VIIRS, pre-computed radiative-transfer look-up tables for the OCI spectral response, and spectral libraries of land and clouds to produce realistic radiometry in the standard Level-1B format (https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/pace/format/) of OCI. The PyTOAST simulator is computationally efficient, and thus allows for large scale production of multi-day global data distributions with realistic viewing geometries for testing of retrieval software mechanics and data flow.