Spectral line shape and its effect on atmospheric transmissions

✍ Scribed by A. R. Curtis; R. M. Goody

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1954
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 614 KB
• Volume: 80
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0035-9009
• DOI: 10.1002/qj.49708034307

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The detailed shape of a pressure‐broadened spectral line obtained by Lindholm has been evaluated and used to derive an expression for the mean transmission of a disordered band. This is compared with the corresponding expression using the Lorentz line shape. It is shown that the difference in mean transmission for these two line shapes is scarcely detectable spectrophotometrically in the cases of the principal telluric bands of ozone and water vapour, and probably also for carbon dioxide. It is concluded that, until more important problems have been solved, it is probably uneconomical to make use of line shapes any more complicated than that of Lorentz for computations of heating rates in the atmosphere, provided always that theory is used only in order to apply existing laboratory data to atmospheric conditions.