Scripps Institution of Oceanography

SIO Reference 59-20. In the study of the penetration of (either natural or artificial) light into the sea and the atmosphere, the most important variable is the radiance distribution which describes the angular distribution of the "brightness" of monochromatic light about each point in the medium. While much is known about the theory of the radiance distribution, the equations governing it are extremely difficult to solve in detail. It would then be of great help in practical everyday problems to be able to obtain rough estimates of upper and lower bounds of the radiance distribution about a given point in the medium.