Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net 1680-7367 1680-7375 5 2 2005 10.5194/acpd-5-1319-2005 http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/5/1319/2005/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/5/1319/2005/acpd-5-1319-2005.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/5/1319/2005/acpd-5-1319-2005.pdf 1319 1381 2005-03-09 Technical note: The libRadtran software package for radiative transfer calculations &ndash; description and examples of use B. Mayer A. Kylling Deutsches Zentrum f&uuml;r Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Institut f&uuml;r Physik der Atmosph&auml;re, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital, Norway previously at: Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Kjeller, Norway The libRadtran&nbsp;software package is a suite of tools for radiative transfer calculations in the Earth's atmosphere. Its main tool is the uvspec program. It may be used to compute radiances, irradiances and actinic fluxes in the solar and terrestrial part of the spectrum. The design of uvspec allows simple problems to be easily solved using defaults and included data, hence making it suitable for educational purposes. At the same time the flexibility in how and what input may be specified makes it a powerful and versatile tool for research tasks. The uvspec tool and additional tools included with libRadtran&nbsp;are described and realistic examples of their use are given. The libRadtran&nbsp;software package is available from same <TT><A NAME="tex2html1" HREF="http://www.libradtran.org">http://www.libradtran.org</A></TT>.