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This temperature inversion is the opposite of what is normally the case; air is usually warmer close to the surface, and cooler higher up. In calm weather, a layer of significantly warmer air can rest over colder dense air, forming an atmospheric duct which acts like a refracting lens, producing a series of both inverted and erect images.
The stratosphere defines a layer in which temperatures rise with increasing altitude. This rise in temperature is caused by the absorption of ultraviolet radiation (UV) from the Sun by the ozone layer, which restricts turbulence and mixing. Although the temperature may be −60 °C (−76 °F; 210 K) at the tropopause, the top of the ...
Atmospheric thermodynamics is the study of heat-to-work transformations (and their reverse) that take place in the Earth's atmosphere and manifest as weather or climate. . Atmospheric thermodynamics use the laws of classical thermodynamics, to describe and explain such phenomena as the properties of moist air, the formation of clouds, atmospheric convection, boundary layer meteorology, and ...
Atmospheric windows are useful for astronomy, remote sensing, telecommunications and other science and technology applications. In the study of the greenhouse effect, the term atmospheric window may be limited to mean the infrared window, which is the primary escape route for a fraction of the thermal radiation emitted near the surface.
Opacity is the measure of impenetrability to electromagnetic or other kinds of radiation, especially visible light. In radiative transfer , it describes the absorption and scattering of radiation in a medium , such as a plasma , dielectric , shielding material , glass, etc.
The optical atmospheric window is the optical portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that passes through the Earth's atmosphere, excluding its infrared part; [10] although, as mentioned before, the optical spectrum also includes the IR spectrum and thus the optical window could include the infrared window (8 – 14 μm), the latter is ...
Kramers' opacity law describes the opacity of a medium in terms of the ambient density and temperature, assuming that the opacity is dominated by bound-free absorption (the absorption of light during ionization of a bound electron) or free-free absorption (the absorption of light when scattering a free ion, also called bremsstrahlung). [1]
An elevated inversion layer is thus a region of warm air above a region of cold air, but higher in the atmosphere (generally not touching the surface). A capping inversion occurs when there is a boundary layer with a normal temperature profile (warm air rising into cooler air) and the layer above that is an inversion layer (cooler air below ...