Community Radiative Transfer Model (CRTM) is the fast radiative transfer model for calculations of radiances for satellite infrared or microwave nadir scanning radiometers (see push broom scanner).
Given an atmospheric profile of temperature, variable gas concentrations, cloud and surface properties CRTM calculates radiances and brightness temperatures. The only mandatory input is water vapor and ozone. The range of temperatures and water vapour concentrations over which the optical depth computations are valid depends on the training datasets which were used.
CRTM contains forward, tangent linear, adjoint and K (full Jacobian matrices) versions of the model; the latter three modules for variational assimilation or retrieval applications.
One of several applications of CRTM are retrievals of brightness temperature and sea surface temperature from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer sensor.
Chen Y, F. Weng, Y. Han, and Q. Liu, 2008: Validation of the community radiative transfer model (CRTM) by using CloudSat Data. J. Geophys.Res., in press.