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Few portable programming environments exist to support the labour-intensive process of application development for parallel systems. Popular stand-alone tools for analysis, restructuring, debugging and performance optimisation have not been successfully combined to create integrated development environments. In the ESPRIT project FITS we have created such a toolset, based upon commercial and research tools, for parallel application development. Component tools are loosely coupled; with little modification, they may invoke functions from other components. Thus integration comes at minimal cost to the vendor, who retains vital product independence. The FITS interface is publically available and the toolset is easily extensible.

Measurements of 8-12-microm near-horizon sky radiances and meteorological parameters over the ocean near San Diego, CA, were used to evaluate the sky radiance algorithm of LOWTRAN 6. Discrepancies in measured and calculated sky radiances previously attributed to the neglect of multiple scattering effects of aerosols can be overcome by introducing additional low level layers in the calculations of LOWTRAN 6. A comparison between radiance calculations using the single scattering, additive layer approach and those using a multiple scattering version of LOWTRAN raises questions about the applicability of the multiple scattering approach in the far infrared region.

Thermal background models are of particular interest in many fields of science and technology, e.g. meteorology, hydrology, agricultural management, remote sensing and military applications. The complexity of the different modeling strategies varies to a considerable degree from very simplistic approaches for real-time applications to very complex research grade models. This paper summarizes the important physical and biological processes and introduces different modeling concepts. It pinpoints areas of lacking knowledge and shows possible solutions to the problems.

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