Generalized radiative transfer equation for multilevel clouds

Surface and aircraft observations show that many cloud types tend to appear simultaneously at the same location but at different altitudes. Furthermore, clouds may be continuous or broken at a given cloud level within a sensor's field of view (FOV). Therefore, it is desirable that a general radiative transfer equation (RTE) can describe all the possible cloudy atmospheres for remote sensing applications. In this paper an M-level cloudy RTE is formulated. Specific diagrams and equations for up to four-level cloud systems are illustrated.