This atmosphere plugin provides a low fidelity, physics-driven atmospheric modeling capability in DIRSIG5.

Summary

Originally developed as a companion to the ChipMaker plugin, the FourCurveAtmosphere model was designed to provide fidelity somewhere between a fully analytical approximation of the atmosphere and physics-driven representation produced by atmospheric radiative transfer models (e.g. MODTRAN, 6S, etc.). The specific need with ChipMaker simulations was that the overhead of computing a full physics-driven atmosphere model for a given solar and sensor geometry, atmospheric condition, etc. would dwarf the radiometric image calculation for smaller image chips. Hence, an approach to leveraged a pre-computed database was desired.

Note The general assumption with this model is that the sensor is generally overhead and looking down at the world.

Simulations requiring a full model of the atmosphere should use the NewAtmosphere plugin. However, if that level of fidelity is not required, then this plugin serves as an alternative that requires less computation to be spent on atmospheric calculations.

This capability is currently divided into two major components:

  • The fourcurve_builder tool, which interfaces with the externally developed physics-based atmospheric models to construct an HDF database of atmospheric data tables.

  • The FourCurveAtmosphere plugin, which uses the HDF atmospheric database to drive the atmospheric contributions in a DIRSIG5 execution.

Approach

This plugin models the atmosphere using four spectral curves, which are a function of the solar geometry angle and sensor view geometry. The four curves are:

  1. Ground-reaching solar irradiance [watts / (cm2 micron)]

  2. Path radiance per meter [watts / (cm2 sr meter micron)]

  3. Path extinction per meter [1 / meter]

  4. Hemispherical sky irradiance [watts / (cm2 micron)]

For each solar declination angle, the database contains a series of four curve "sets" that are a function of the sensor declination angle and relative azimuth angle between the solar and sensor path.

Note In the original version of this model, the path transmission and radiance were not a function of the sensor view geometry. Hence, the model was simply 4 curves for each solar geometry. The next iteration of the model added the view geometry dependence, which makes the number of spectral curves for each solar geometry much greater than 4. However, the "four curve" model name was retained.

The tables are computed for a sensor at a nominal altitude (see the nominal_altitude variable in the database configuration).

The spectral path radiance and path extinction for a request solar and sensor path geometry is then length scaled using a uniform optical depth scaling approach.

Important The scaling is never extrapolated more than 110% of the path length used to generate the table data. If your sensor altitude exceeds the nominal database altitude by more than 110%, then you should generate a new database.

Data Model

The database for the model is stored in a Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) file. The data model for this plugin is fairly straightforward. A single HDF database can contain one or more atmospheric conditions (conditions). A set of conditions captures a specific combination of atmospheric state variables, including air temperature, air pressure, humidity, aerosol type and aerosol densities distributions within the atmosphere. For example, in terms of a MODTRAN driven atmospheric condition, the state might be the atmosphere model, aerosol model aerosol visibility supplied to MODTRAN. All the conditions in the database share:

  1. A set of spectral samples that define the wavelengths at which the spectral curves are sampled,

  2. A set of solar declination samples that define the solar declination angles that are sampled,

  3. A set of path declination samples that define the angles the sensor declination angles that are sampled, and

  4. A set of relative azimuth samples that define the relative angles between the sensor view and solar illumination geometry.

Each conditions in the database has a distinct and non-null name. For each condition, there is a set of solar declination angles. Within each solar declination angle, there is the angularly constant data (ground reaching solar irradiance, ground reaching sky irradiance and path extinction) and the angularly sample data (the path radiance).

Database
+- SpectralSamples
+- SolarDeclinationAngles
+- PathDeclinationAngles
+- RelativeAzimuthAngles
+- Conditions
   +- mls_urban_5k
      +- SolarDeclination0
         +- AngularConstantData
         +- PathRadiance
      +- SolarDeclination1
         +- AngularConstantData
         +- PathRadiance
         ...
      +- SolarDeclination1
         +- AngularConstantData
         +- PathRadiance
   +- mls_urban_23k
      +- SolarDeclination0
         +- AngularConstantData
         +- PathRadiance
      +- SolarDeclination1
         +- AngularConstantData
         +- PathRadiance
         ...
      +- SolarDeclination1
         +- AngularConstantData
         +- PathRadiance

The interface control document for this file can be found here.

Data Usage

The plugin that uses the database performs operations using the following general logic:

  1. During initialization, the user-requested conditions are loaded

  2. During a state change (e.g. the start of a capture):

    1. The ephemeris plugin is used to figure out the current solar geometry.

    2. The AngularlyConstantData and PathRadiance tables are loaded from the SolarDeclination group that is the closest, nearest neighbor match to the current solar declination angles.

    3. The loaded tables are spectrally resampled to match the current spectral state (e.g. wavelengths being modeled by the current sensor).

  3. During the radiometry calculations, atmospheric requests are handled as follows:

    1. When the solar irradiance is requested, the loaded solar irradiance data in the AngularlyConstantData table is used.

    2. When the sky irradiance is requested, the loaded sky irradiance curve data in the AngularlyConstantData table is used.

    3. When a path transmission is requested, the loaded path extinction data in the AngularlyConstantData table is used with the length of the path.

    4. When a path transmission is requested, the path radiance table is bi-linearly interpolated in the zenith and azimuth dimensions using the sensor view declination angle, relative azimuth angle to the sun and the length of the path from the PathRadiance table.

Error Conditions

The plugin currently supports the following error conditions:

  • If the spectral state does not overlap the spectral coverage (e.g. SpectralSamples) of the database, an error is reported.

Plugin Input

The inputs to the plugin is a JSON object that is embedded directly into the JSIM file where the plugin is requested (via the inputs section). Below is a generalized example of the JSON object:

  ...
  "plugin_list": [
    ...
    {
      "name": "FourCurveAtmosphere",
      "inputs": {
        "database": "./user_defined_atm.hdf",
        "conditions": "tp5/mls_rural_10km.tp5"
      }
    },
    ...
  ]
  ...
}

In this example, database variable is assigned the path to a file containing the data model. If the database variable is not provided, then the default database will be used (see below). The conditions variable contains the name of the atmospheric conditions inside of the database to use for defining the curves, as only one can be used in a single simulation.

Default Database

Each DIRSIG release includes a default database that contains a variety of conditions. This database is stored in $DIRSIG_HOME/lib/data/atm and a more detailed README file is located there with details about the database.

The default database contains 30 separate atmospheric conditions, encompassing the permutations of the following three main variables:

Profiles

Tropical, Mid-Latitude Summer (MLS) and Mid-Latitude Winter (MLW)

Aerosols

Rural and Urban aerosols

Visibilities

5, 10, 15, 30 and 50 km

The corresponding condition names are:

  • Mid-Latitude Summer (MLS,) Rural aerosols

    • mls_rural_5km

    • mls_rural_10km

    • mls_rural_15km

    • mls_rural_30km

    • mls_rural_50km

  • Mid-Latitude Summer (MLS,) Urban aerosols

    • mls_urban_5km

    • mls_urban_10km

    • mls_urban_15km

    • mls_urban_30km

    • mls_urban_50km

  • Mid-Latitude Winter (MLW), Rural aerosols

    • mlw_rural_5km

    • mlw_rural_10km

    • mlw_rural_15km

    • mlw_rural_30km

    • mlw_rural_50km

  • Mid-Latitude Winter (MLW), Urban aerosols

    • mlw_urban_5km

    • mlw_urban_10km

    • mlw_urban_15km

    • mlw_urban_30km

    • mlw_urban_50km

  • Tropical, Rural aerosols

    • trop_rural_5km

    • trop_rural_10km

    • trop_rural_15km

    • trop_rural_30km

    • trop_rural_50km

  • Tropical, Urban aerosols

    • trop_urban_5km

    • trop_urban_10km

    • trop_urban_15km

    • trop_urban_30km

    • trop_urban_50km

The spectral coverage of the default database is 0.380 → 2.520 microns at 0.001 micron sampling.

The angular sampling of the default database is as follows:

  • Solar declination is sampled from 0 → 80 degrees at 10 degree sampling.

  • Path declination is sampled from 0 → 80 degrees at 10 degree sampling.

  • Path relative azimuth is sampled from 0 → 180 degrees at 45 degree sampling.

The nominal altitude of the default database is 10 km.

Below is an example .jsim input using the mls_rural_50km condition of the default database:

  ...
  "plugin_list": [
    ...
    {
      "name": "FourCurveAtmosphere",
      "inputs": {
        "conditions": "mls_rural_50km"
      }
    },
    ...
  ]
  ...
}

Generating a Database

Included in the DIRSIG distribution is a program called fourcurve_builder that can be used to generate HDF databases. The reasons you might consider building an alternative to the default database include:

  • Add a condition that doesn’t exist in the default database.

  • Change the nominal altitude used in the default database.

  • Change the spectral coverage used in the default database.

The input for the fourcurve_builder program is a JSON object that can either be given in an input file via the -i or --input flags or through the standard input stream. An example of the JSON object is given below:

{
  "bandpass" : {
    "units"   : "microns",
    "minimum" : 0.380,
    "maximum" : 2.520,
    "delta"   : 0.001
  },
  "nominal_altitude" : 10000,
  "solar_declination_samples" : [ 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 ],
  "path_declination_samples" : [ 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 ],
  "relative_azimuth_samples" : [ 0, 45, 90, 135, 180 ],
  "backend" : {
    "name": "modtran_tape",
    "modtran_profile": "MODTRAN4",
    "tape5_filenames": [
      "tp5/mls_rural_5km.tp5",
      "tp5/mls_rural_10km.tp5",
      "tp5/mls_rural_25km.tp5"
    ]
  }
}

The bandpass defines the spectral range and sampling that the database fill be created for. The backend configuration is identical to those used with the NewAtmosphere plugin. and specifies what backend model to use to generate the curves. When using MODTRAN, a list of tape5 files is given as input and each tape5 results in a set of conditions, with the path becoming the name of conditions.

Note Since HDF does not allow slashes in data set or group names, all slashes (/) are replaced by colons (:).

The following variables are optional in the input JSON:

nominal_altitude

This is the nominal altitude used for the path transmission and radiance calculations. The default value is 10,000 meters (10 km).

solar_declination_samples

This is an array of the solar declination angle samples in degrees. The default angles are 0 → 80 degrees at 10 degree sampling.

path_declination_samples

This is an array of the path declination angle samples in degrees. The default angles are 0 → 80 degrees at 10 degree sampling.

relative_azimuth_samples

This is an array of the relative azimuth angle samples between the solar and sensor path in degrees. The default angles are 0 → 180 degrees at 10 degree sampling. Due to assumed symmetry, there is no need to sample 0 → 360 degrees.

For more details, see the command-line help for fourcurve_builder.

Demos

The FourCurveAtm1 demo contains a simple demonstration of how to use both the plugin and fourcurve_builder. It contains the above example of fourcurve_builder JSON in the atm.json file and produces a video of a simple scene over the course of a day to show how the atmosphere varies as a function of solar declination angle.