Dear Colleagues,

you receive this eMail because you are either a user of the radiative transfer package libRadtran or because we think that you might be interested in this information. Should you not be interested in receiving further information, please let us know.

Attached to this eMail is the 18th libRadtran Newsletter. The main issue of this Newsletter is to announce the new version,

           *** libRadtran 2.0.3 ***

which includes some improvements and bug fixes compared to version 2.0.2

Let us first wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy  and successful new year! 

Bernhard Mayer, Claudia Emde, Arve Kylling, and Josef Gasteiger.

/*----------------------------------------------------------------
 * libRadtran Newsletter No. 18
 *
 * December 24, 2019
 *
 * Claudia Emde   (claudia.emde_at_lmu.de)
 * Bernhard Mayer (bernhard.mayer_at_lmu.de)
 * Arve Kylling   (arve.kylling_at_gmail.com)
 * Josef Gasteiger (josef.gasteiger_at_univie.ac.at)
 *
 * ### More info: http://www.libradtran.org ###
 *----------------------------------------------------------------*/

Dear libRadtran users,

merry Christmas and a good start into the New Year! 

In an attempt to continue an old tradition, a new libRadtran
version is released as a Christmas gift. The change in version
number is not that big, and the changes are neither. Nevertheless,
there is a number of new features and bug fixes.

 *** Changes:

Two new approximate solvers,

- the twostream with maximum-random-overlap assumption „twomaxrnd“ 
  following the book by Zdunkowski et al (thanks to Nina Crnivec)

- the neighboring column approximation (NCA) to calculate thermal heating rate profiles 
  (thanks to Caro Klinger)

Check out the documentation!

- the Mie tool allows calculation of various widths of the size distribution at the same time; might save computational time

- mc_sensordirection allows calculation of irradiance on tilted surfaces with MYSTIC, e.g. for photovoltaic modules. 


*** Bug fixes: 

- mc_backward edn, eup were wrong when VROOM was switched on (most likely, nobody ever used it)

- mc_backward_output edir did not work in spherical geometry

- fixed bug with aerosol_set_tau_at_wvl

*** Reminders:

 * For simulations with clouds and/or aerosols we strongly recommend
    to get the additional optical properties data from the Download area,
    which are much more accurate than the defaults, in particular for radiance simulations. 

And now, have fun!