Evaluation of the SPARTACUS-Urban Radiation Model for Vertically Resolved Shortwave Radiation in Urban Areas.

Unlabelled: The heterogenous structure of urban environments impacts interactions with radiation, and the intensity of urban-atmosphere exchanges. Numerical weather prediction (NWP) often characterizes the urban structure with an infinite street canyon, which does not capture the three-dimensional urban morphology realistically. Here, the SPARTACUS (Speedy Algorithm for Radiative Transfer through Cloud Sides) approach to urban radiation (SPARTACUS-Urban), a multi-layer radiative transfer model designed to capture three-dimensional urban geometry for NWP, is evaluated with respect to the explicit Discrete Anisotropic Radiative Transfer (DART) model.