Recent progress in the development of the Optimal Spectral Sampling (OSS) method

The OSS method models band averaged radiances as weighted sums of monochromatic radiances. The method is fast and accurate and has the advantage over other existing techniques that it is directly applicable to cloudy atmospheres. In our previous work, we focused on the so-called “localized” search approach in order to minimize the number of nodes needed to represent a given channel. Since then efforts have been focused on implementing the OSS model in the JCSDA Community Radiative Transfer Model (CRTM) (Han et al., 2005) and on generalizing the approach to make it applicable to generic hyperspectral/broadband modeling applications across the spectrum. This paper describes advances relevant to infrared sounding applications and numerical weather prediction model assimilation. These include generalized search techniques to minimize the total number of nodes required to model N channels and application of OSS to scattering atmospheres.