Korkin, SergeyYang, E.-S.Spurr, R.Emde, C.Zhai, Peng-WangKrotkov, N.Vasilkov, A.Lyapustin, A.2023-03-222023-03-222022-05-02Korkin, S. et al. Numerical Results for Polarized Light Scattering in a Spherical Atmosphere. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, 287, 108194 (2 May 2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2022.108194.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2022.108194http://hdl.handle.net/11603/27034We report numerical results for polarized light reflection from the top of a Rayleigh scattering spherical atmosphere with height-dependent single scattering albedo over a dark surface. Michael Mishchenko considered this scenario back in the 1990’s, for a plane-parallel atmosphere of unit optical thickness (OT = 1), for which radiance errors arising from neglecting polarization reaches their highest values. To further extend Mishchenko's results, we consider a value of OT = 0.25, for which the effect of atmospheric curvature is pronounced. New results are generated using three state-of-the art radiative transfer (RT) codes. These are: the MYSTIC and MCSSA models, which simulate light scattering in a true-spherical atmosphere using Monte Carlo methods; and the discrete ordinate code VLIDORT, operating with a new multiple-scatter spherical correction designed to deliver reasonable approximations to spherical-medium scattering. In this work, we report results for both single and multiple scattering; this will help to support the validation of existing and future polarized spherical RT codes, especially those using approximative methods to deal with sphericity.24 pagesen-USThis work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.Public Domain Mark 1.0http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/Text