Optical property dimensionality reduction techniques for accelerated radiative transfer performance: Application to remote sensing total ozone retrievals

•Dimensionality reduction techniques for atmospheric optical properties.•Accelerated performance of linearized radiative transfer models.•Application to UV total ozone column retrieval.

In this paper, we introduce several dimensionality reduction techniques for optical parameters. We consider the principal component analysis, the local linear embedding methods (locality pursuit embedding, locality preserving projection, locally embedded analysis), and discrete orthogonal transforms (cosine, Legendre, wavelet). The principle component analysis has already been shown to be an effective and accurate method of enhancing radiative transfer performance for simulations in an absorbing and a scattering atmosphere. By linearizing the corresponding radiative transfer model, we analyze the applicability of the proposed methods to a practical problem of total ozone column retrieval from UV-backscatter measurements.