Sky radiance, volcanoes, and sunsets

Beautiful sunsets occur frequently after major volcanic eruptions. Zerefos (2007) used this phenomenon to retrieve aerosol optical thickness after historic volcanic eruptions. For their highly innovative approach they used the libRadtran radiative transfer package. This page presents some thoughts about simulating radiance around sunset, accompanying our public comment to the paper by Zerefos (2007). Please refer to this comment for more information.

360° panoramic view of the the sky under different volcanic conditions (Figure 1)
35mm camera wideangle lens view of the sky under different volcanic conditions (Figure 2)
libRadtran standard aerosol profiles (Figure 3)