DISORT input and output conventions

See DISORT and VDISORT core solvers for the scalar and polarized transfer equations.

Gridded fluxes and DFDT are evaluated at each layer’s lower boundary; the top boundary is omitted. See Radiative heating rates for conversion to K/s, frequency integration, and pressure-based heating diagnostics.

• Transparent layers. Exact zero-thickness layers are not accepted. tau_arr is a strictly increasing cumulative optical-depth grid beginning above zero, so each represented layer has positive thickness. A transparent layer should be removed before constructing the solver. Reference surface-only tests use a negligible but nonzero optical thickness and albedo; this approximates, but does not claim, exact transparent-layer support.

• No separate two-stream solver. Setting \(N_q=2\) selects a two-stream discrete-ordinate instance rather than a distinct approximate two-stream algorithm.

• Phase conventions. VDISORT assumes all Mueller matrices have consistent propagation directions and Stokes reference planes. The supplied combined matrices already include the cosine/sine transformation. Applying that transformation twice, adding an extra factor of two, or mixing \([I,Q,U,V]\) with \([I_v,I_h,U,V]\) changes the physics.

Implementation and validation details are in DISORT implementation and validation.