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5 - Atmospheric Radiative Transfer and Visibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2019

Christian Seigneur
Christian Seigneur
Affiliation:
École des Ponts Paris Tech
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Summary

Solar radiation is essential to life on Earth and is one of the major factors governing the atmospheric general circulation. Furthermore, solar radiation plays a major role in air pollution, since it leads to photochemical reactions when its radiative energy breaks apart some molecules. Then, these photochemical reactions initiate chemical and physico-chemical transformations that contribute to various forms of air pollution, including ozone, fine particles, and acid rain. In addition, the Earth emits radiation, which may be partially absorbed by anthropogenic greenhouse gases and some fraction of particulate matter, thereby leading to climate change. Finally, understanding how radiation is transferred through the atmosphere is useful to estimate the effect of air pollution on atmospheric visibility. This chapter describes first the radiative transfer processes in the atmosphere, i.e., solar radiation, its absorption by oxygen and ozone in the stratosphere, and its scattering by gases and particles.

Type
Chapter
Information
Air Pollution
Concepts, Theory, and Applications
 , pp. 76 - 94
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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