Simulation of IR cloud background based on aircraft data

Through thermal emission and scattered solar radiation, clouds present a significant clutter source to infrared surveillance sensors viewing from space. This program has generated IR cloud background scenes through modeling the thermal emission and scattering of the sun, which does so by combining the blackbody thermal emissions at cloud altitudes with solar radiation scattered from the cloud's top surface, and also takes as inputs descriptions of the incident solar radiance, along with sky shine and path radiance,. using NASA's ER-2 HIS data.