The SBDART (Santa Barbara DISORT Atmospheric Radiative Transfer) is a FORTRAN computer code designed for the analysis of a wide variety of radiative transfer problems encountered in satellite remote sensing and atmospheric energy budget studies. The program is based on a collection of highly developed and reliable physical models, which have been developed by the atmospheric science community over the past few decades. The following discussion is a brief introduction to the key components of the code and the models on which they are based.
In its standard mode of operation SBDART relies on low resolution band models developed for the LOWTRAN 7 atmospheric transmission code (Pierluissi and Marogoudakis, 1986). These models provide the clear sky atmospheric transmisson from 0 to 50000 cm-1 and include the effects of all radiatively active molecular species found in the earth's atmosphere. The models were derived from detailed line-by-line calculations which were degraded to 20 cm-1 resolution for use in LOWTRAN. This translates to a wavelength resolution of about 5 nm in the visible and about 200 nm in the thermal infrared.