== Status: December 24, 2008 ==

If you have time and talent to take over any of the jobs below please
contact the developers!

== General points ==

  * Complete checking of uvspec input variables

  * Better error handling. In uvspec.h have a list of appropriate error codes. But, be careful, this must agree with error codes in ascii.h etc. It would be nice to have standard error messages for each error code.

  * More documentation:
    * Use sdoc or similar tool to document all *.f and *.c files.
    * Document all stand-alone programs in the tools directory.

  * More configuration options for water and ice clouds, aerosols; e.g. wavelength dependent aerosol_gg_file, aerosol_tau_file, aerosol_ssa_file (matrix input format like densfile_sza)

  * More input options for time: LOC (local time), LAT (local apparent time), UTC; take function LAT from zenith and invert it.

  * More, but fast examples

  * User-friendly mechanism for adding of new absorbing gases   
    * more flexible input of atmospheric constituents in atmosphere file
    * read profile of the new gas
    * absorption cross-sections in an external file
    * interphase to an line-by-line model and absorption data base (HITRAN)

  * More consistent treatment of scaling with mixing ratios, columns, and dens_files; e.g. mixing_ratio 5% will scale up a minor constituent unexpectedly to 4.8% = 0.05/(1.0+0.05); reduce all other constituents accordingly

  * Possibility to add more than one dens file (different trace gas profiles on different vertical grids)

  * include HDF library
    * read e.g. MODIS albedo in the original format

  * Allow output_user also for solver polradtran

  * Include more radiative transfer equation solvers in libRadtran. Of special interest are
    * successive order of scattering method to include Raman scattering.
    * codes that accounts for changes in the refractive index, i.e. at the atmosphere ocean boundary.
    * psndo from tuv
    * qdisort (Raman scattering)
    * fast and stable twostream approximation

  * More photodissociation stuff.

  * Include standard aerosols, standard clouds; e.g. it would be nice to simply select a 'wc_type stratocumulus'

  * Better o3 cross sections for the Chappuis band?

  * Improved solar zenith/azimuth angle calculation

  * Better extraterrestrial spectrum above 420nm?
 
  * Tool to create custom-made correlated-k tables and add support for a generic correlated-k approximation

More information is available on request.


== Specific things to be done ==

  * Better checking for tau550 option: with e.g. correlated_k KATO, tau550 does not produce an error message if the lower wavelength is larger than 550nm; instead the optical thickness is set to 0; need to consider wvn_upper and wvn_lower here!

  * oceabrdf() returns values for arbitrary wavelengths; if the wavelength is larger than 4 micron, it is replaced by 4 micron; should either stop and return an error or provide a routine that calculates useful numbers in the IR. In general, there should be a warning e.g. if the albedo is larger than 0.1 in a thermal calculation.


== Longterm visions ==

  *  Get radiative output for input:
     
     place here
     time  now

  *  libRadtran goes to space
     * radiative transfer for Mars, Jupiter ...
     * make input file for all constants of a planet gravitation_acceleration_surface, radius_planet, day/year duration, mass_planet, tilt of rotation axis
     * clean up every assumption, which assume Earth environment, especially atmosphere

  * libRadtran in the submarine region: underwater radiative transfer

  * Restructuring: change loop and memory structure of libRadtran to have optical properties for only one wavelength in memory at one time