Comparison of Daily Averaged Reflection, Transmission, and Absorption for Selected Radiative Flux Transfer Approximations

Abstract

This paper compares accuracy for the daily averaged reflection, transmission, and absorption of solar flux derived from the delta-four-stream approximation and a few selected two-stream approximations. In the chosen variety of two-stream approximations, a two-stream approximation suggested by Zhu produces the most accurate reflection and transmission for conservative scattering with optical thickness τ1 < 3. Otherwise, the delta?Eddinton approximation is superior to other two-stream approximations. The delta-four-stream approximation produces errors that are smaller than the delta-Eddington approximation by at least a factor of 2.