3D Monte Carlo surface-atmosphere radiative transfer modelling with DART

Significant errors can arise if the adjacency effect (i.e., the contribution of neighbouring pixels to the radiance of a pixel) is neglected in the interpretation of remote sensing images. For example, adjacency radiances can account for >30% of the signal at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) of a white sand-lined coastline (Bulgarelli and Zibordi, 2018). This paper shows that 3D radiative transfer (RT) modelling can quantify this phenomenon. It presents a new 3D Monte Carlo surface-atmosphere RT modelling in the DART RT model, and a resulting virtual 3D Earth-Atmosphere laboratory for accurate simulation of atmospheric RT, including the adjacency effect. It was first validated with the atmosphere model SMART-G for 2D scenes: relative difference is 0.20% in TOA directional reflectance of infinite black surface for solar zenith equal to 60°, and 0.03% in TOA nadir reflectance of a black disc inside infinite white Lambertian surface, for solar zenith equal to 0° and 30°. Then, the adjacency effect on the TOA radiance and TOA albedo of a 3D scene was studied for a circular city (radius 2 km) surrounded by a forest (dimension 10 km), for four Sentinel-2A bands (blue, green, red, near infrared). Its contribution to TOA nadir radiance reaches ∼20% in the near infrared band, and increases with viewing zenith angle (VZA): ∼60% if VZA = 80°. The 3D scene TOA albedo was calculated after adapting the DART Bidirectional Reflectance Factor (BRF) camera to simulate TOA radiance for all upward directions at any angular resolution. For Sentinel-2A's four bands, the adjacency effect influences the TOA albedo of the circular city by up to 10% for the green band and up to 27% for the near infrared band, well above the maximum uncertainty 5% usually required in land surface applications. The adjacency effect of the city neighbourhood 3D structure was studied by replacing it by a Lambertian surface with its albedo. The city nadir TOA radiance changed by up to 1.3% with very small change in TOA albedo (<0.5%). This new modelling greatly improves DART potential for accurate simulation of atmospheric effects. It is in the DART version freely available for research and education (https://dart.omp.eu). © 2023 Elsevier Inc.