A Real 3-D Monte Carlo Model for the Simulation of Radiative Transfer in Waters

A forward Monte Carlo 3-D (FMC3D) model is developed for simulating light fields in a volume of water where the boundary conditions for radiance values can be expressed by mathematical formulas, which cannot be done using the radiative transfer models currently available such as HydroLight. Water is assumed parallel homogenous for these models, which are incapable of investigating the sidewall reflectance effect on the light fields. These ones are called quasi-3-D radiative transfer models. The FMC3D model perfects the assumption and the incapability and is validated using the in situ data measured in the tank experiment. The FMC3D model is first applied to investigate the sidewall reflectance effect on the remote sensing reflectance R_rs for waters in a fabricated tank with infinite depth and different radii. The investigation shows that the effect is decreasing with the increase in the tank radius and that the minimum radius that the effect is negligible for highly scattering water is bigger than that for highly absorbing water. Taking the tank used in the experiment carried out in a previous work by Han and Rundquist as an example, the FMC3D model is second applied to investigate the combining effects on R_rs from bottom and sidewall reflectances. Compared with R_rs for open water, the R_rs for tank water having the same inherent optical properties is underestimated. The underestimation is increasing with the increase in the single scattering albedo ω and can be up to 32% for water with ω = 0.88, showing that the effects cannot be removed by the black inside wall, which is a method commonly used in tank experiments. The potential applications of the FMC3D model are discussed, taking the examples of the correction for the wall reflectance effect on apparent spectra measured in tank experiments and of the scattering error correction for the reflective tube absorption coefficient me- sured using a WET Labs AC-9 or AC-S device.