The correlated k-distribution technique as applied to the AVHRR channels

Correlated k-distributions have been created to account for the molecular absorption found in the spectral ranges of the five Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) satellite channels. The production of the k-distributions was based upon an exponential-sum fitting of transmissions (ESFT) technique which was applied to reference line-by-line absorptance calculations. To account for the overlap of spectral features from different molecular species, the present routines made use of the multiplication transmissivity property which allows for considerable flexibility, especially when altering relative mixing ratios of the various molecular species. To determine the accuracy of the correlated k-distribution technique as compared to the line-by-line procedure, atmospheric flux and heating rate calculations were run for a wide variety of atmospheric conditions. For the atmospheric conditions taken into consideration, the correlated k-distribution technique has yielded results within about 0.5% for both the cases where the satellite spectral response functions were applied and where they were not. The correlated k-distribution's principal advantages is that it can be incorporated directly into multiple scattering routines that consider scattering as well as absorption by clouds and aerosol particles.