The kCARTA code provides a means to calculate on a "pseudo line by line"
basis, atmospheric optical depths as well as radiances at arbitrary pressure
levels, for either a downlook or an uplook instrument. The user needs to
provide a specificed atmospheric profile, surface, and instrument viewing
parameters. In addition kCARTA can compute analytic jacobians extremely
rapidly. The complete KCARTA package consists of four pieces:
1) the KCARTA source code, written in F77
2) the KCARTA optical depth kCompressed database, available for big-endian
and little-endian machines,
3) the kCARTA auxiliary data files (top of atmosphere solar radiances, water
continuum files, test regression profiles, sea surface emissivities etc),
4) the RTP input/output library.
In addition, any user will also need the kLAYERS level-to-layer package. Users
are also advised to pick up the Matlab package to read output files produced
from kCARTA runs, as well as "kcwrap" that allows the user to put in point
profiles into an RTP file, and output AIRS SRF convolved results (after
appropriate calls to kLAYERS and kCARTA).
We continually refine KCARTA. The clear sky radiative transfer code has not had any significant changes or bugfixes since about 2004, and development has been "frozen" at v1.10. However we actively update the optical depth kCompressed Database by validating kCARTA results against measured AIRS radiances. New versions of the KCARTA v1.10 code and/or database will appear here as new features are added, or bugs are corrected.
In addition we are testing and implementing scattering algorithms, as well as NonLocal Thermodynamic Equilibrium algorithms, for use with kCARTA. These will be released in later versions of kCARTA (v1.11 and up) when we feel we are ready to give them out. Till then ... make do with v1.10!!!
The klayers package converts atmospheric profiles at discreet point levels into integrated slab layer profiles of the type used by KCARTA and SARTA. klayers uses the RTP I/O format, making it very convenient for use with KCARTA and SARTA.
MATLAB users who will be working with RTP files will definitely want to pick up our basic RTP I/O toolkit.
basic RTP I/O toolkit for MATLABTabulated AIRS Spectral Response Functions (SRFs) are available here.
The AIRS Stand Alone Radiative Transfer Algorithm, developed from kCARTA, is available here
A copy of the kCARTA user manual is available here