sasktran2 2025.2.2

The SASKTRAN radiative transfer model Version 2

SASKTRAN

The SASKTRAN radiative transfer framework is a radiative transfer tool developed at the University of Saskatchewan. Originally designed for use with the OSIRIS instrument (https://research-groups.usask.ca/osiris/) it has since evolved to be applicable to a large variety of applications. SASKTRAN is a full framework and not just a radiative transfer model, as such it contains databases or interfaces to standard climatologies and species optical properties.

SASKTRAN2 is a full re-implementation of the original SASKTRAN framework with large computational efficiency improvements, full linearizations of atmospheric input properties, and an improved Python interface.

Installation

The preferred method to install SASKTRAN2 is through the pre-compiled Conda package

conda install -c conda-forge sasktran2

these packages are made available for Python versions 3.11, 3.12, 3.13 on Windows/Linux/Mac platforms. For Mac, both x86_64 and Arm packages are available. For Linux, arm/ppc are also supported.

Wheels are also built for the same platforms and can be installed through,

pip install sasktran2

SASKTRAN2 can also be built directly from source,

pip install .

When building from source it is required that a Blas/LAPACK implementation is findable by CMake.

We also provide an example conda environment that can be used to build the code. For Mac/Linux we recommend,

conda env create -f conda/dev_env.yml

For Windows you need to first install Visual Studio 2022, and then

conda env create -f conda/dev_env_windows.yml

Then the package can be installed with.

conda activate sasktran2-dev-env
pip install .

Usage

Documentation can be found at https://sasktran2.readthedocs.io/

License

SASKTRAN2 is made available under the MIT license.

Acknowledgement

We request that users of the model contact the authors before publishing results using SASKTRAN, and that the following publications are acknowledged:

Zawada, D. J., Dueck, S. R., Rieger, L. A., Bourassa, A. E., Lloyd, N. D., and Degenstein, D. A.: High-resolution and Monte Carlo additions to the SASKTRAN radiative transfer model, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 8, 2609-2623, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-2609-2015, 2015.

Bourassa, A. E., Degenstein, D. A., and Llewellyn, E. J.: SASKTRAN: A Spherical Geometry Radiative Transfer Code for Efficient Estimation of Limb Scattered Sunlight, J Quant Spectrosc Radiat Trans, Volume 109, Issue 1, 52-73, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2007.07.007, 2008.