December 2017
Intermediate to advanced
392 pages
14h 52m
English
In Chapter 3, we examined the vertical distribution of temperatures in the atmosphere for some very simplified atmospheric models.1 In particular, we made the assumption that the spectral dependence of the absorption of infrared radiation by gases in the atmosphere were “gray,” that is, they had no dependence on wavelength. In this chapter, we consider a more realistic absorption spectrum of the gases in the atmosphere. It will be seen that the details of the spectral dependence of the infrared absorption are important in the perturbation of the radiative balance by changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, ...
Read now
Unlock full access