Aug. 23, 2009: Version 0.10 has been released!
Now, released under GNU GPL version 3. See here for a
list of changes. The user's guide is now on the Wiki site and can be
edited by any registered member. Your help is greatly appreciated.
Introduction
MCARaTS is an open-source scientific software to
simulate
the
three-dimensional (3-D) radiative transfer (RT) in atmospheric media
with underlying surface.
It uses
the forward-propagating Monte Carlo photon-transport algorithm. The
codes
can be optionally parallelized to run efficiently on parallel
computers. To quickly
know applications of the software, have a look at a
computer-generated art on the
right. The
codes can be applied to
quantitative simulations of
solar and/or infrared energy budget on the earth and quasi-observation
of cloudy atmosphere
with optical instruments.
Characteristics of the software are highlighted in highlight
page and presented in showcase
page with more details. One can
learn how the softwares work from several sample cases, for which input
and output
data are included in the package. See also online manuals for details.
What's
good: Easy to use, fast, and
parallelized.
Basic
algorithm: Forward-propagating
Monte Carlo
photon-transport algorithm.
RT
solvers: Fully-3-D RT, partially-3-D
RT, independent
column
approximation, and so on
Radiation
sources:
Solar
source from top and/or thermal emission from the atmosphere and
surface, or localized source (e.g. laser beam,
isotropically emitting lamp, star in space, etc).
Output:
Radiative fluxes; heating rates;
radiances and air mass factors; computer
graphics; pathlength statistics
Coding language:
Fortran 90/95
Requirements:
A
UNIX/Linux-like operating system and a Fortran 90/95 compiler. MPI
(Message Passing Interface) is
optionally needed for
parallelization.
The software packages are available from the download page.
Documentation
Online manuals are available here in HTML and PDF formats.
HTML versions are always up-to-date because they are frequently edited
on the Wiki site.
MCARaTS v0.10 user's guide: HTML / PDF
MCARaTS v0.9.5 user's guide: HTML / PDF
MCARaTS v0.9 user's guide: HTML / PDF
Methods and algorithms used in MCARaTS are described in the following
papers:
H. Iwabuchi, 2006: Efficient Monte Carlo methods for radiative
transfer modeling. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 63, 2324-2339.
H. Iwabuchi, and H. Kobayashi, 2008: Modeling of radiative
transfer in cloudy atmospheres and plant canopies using Monte Carlo
methods. FRCGC Technical Report, No.8, 199pp.
The above technical report can be delivered to you by request. Please
feel free to ask. English and Japanese versions are available.
Contact
MCARaTS project is supported by volunteers.
Feedbacks, such as bug reports, comments and feature requests are
essential for future
improvement.
If you
are interested in cotributing this project, please contact the
coordinator:
SHDOM:
Spherical harmonic discrete ordinate method for atmospheric radiative
transfer.
(C)
Copyright
2002-2009 MCARaTS
project.
All rights reserved.
Documents and data on this site are
protected by
laws from being copied
without permission.
What's
new 
A new flight movie (19
MB)
is available here, with 640x480 pixels.