A modified two-stream approximation for computations of the solar radiation budget in a cloudy atmosphere

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Abstract
A two-stream method with variable parameters for backward scattering of the diffuse and direct radiant flux densities has been developed to calculate accurately the solar heating rates and radiation fluxes in vertically inhomogeneous model atmospheres with cloud layers included. The spectrum covers the region between 0.2 and 3.580 ?m and the model atmospheres reach up to 70-km altitude. Comparisons between this approximate method and an accurate iterative method yield to maximum relative deviations of less than 3% for the upward- and downward-going fluxes. DOI: 10.1111/j.2153-3490.1978.tb00858.x