Course Outline

1. Relevance to climate and weather
   1. Earth's radiation budget
   2. Diabatic heating
   3. Remote sensing
2. Properties of radiation
   1. Electromagnetic spectrum
   2. Properties of waves
   3. Maxwell's equations
   4. Polarization
   5. Solid angle
   6. Flux versus intensity
3. Statement of the problem of radiative transfer
   1. extinction = scattering + absorption
   2. scattering and absorption parameters
   3. Source function
      • Scattering
      • Thermal emission
   4. Radiative transfer equation
   5. Flux divergence and radiative heating
4. Relevant physics
   1. Global insolation
   2. Conservation of momentum
      
   3. Conservation of energy
   4. Kirchoff's Law and Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium
   5. Molecular transitions
      • Electronic
      • Rotational
      • Vibrational
      • Vibrational-Rotational
   6. Absorption line broadening
      • Natural (Heisenberg)
      • Pressure
      • Doppler
   7. The Earth's atmosphere
   • Gas profiles
   • Atmospheric absorption spectrum
     
   8. Absorption and Scattering by particles
      • Refractive index of ice, water and aerosol
        
      • Effective-medium approximations
      • Dipole radiation by molecules: Rayleigh scattering
      • Reflection, refraction, diffraction
        
      • Scattering by spheres: Mie theory
      • Anomalous diffraction theory
      • Scattering by irregularly shaped particles
   9. Reflection by Surfaces
5. Solutions for Solar radiative transfer Notes
   
1. Derivation of azimuthally-averaged radiative transfer equation
2. Gaussian quadrature
3. Discrete ordinates radiative transfer code (DISORT)
4. Simplifications to phase function
5. Two-stream approximations
6. Comparison of various two-stream solutions Meador and Weaver, 1980
   
7. Similarity transformations
   
8. Doubling-adding technique
9. Adding technique for multiple layers
   
6. Solutions for thermal radiative transfer
   1. Exact
   2. Diffusivity approximation
   3. Line-by-line
   4. Correlated-k
   5. Band models
      • Weak-line limit
      • Strong-line limit
      • Elsasser band model
      • Random band model
      • Malkmus model
      • Scaling approximations
      • Curtis-Godson approximation
      • Broad-band models
7. Applications
1. Stratospheric ozone production and destruction
2. Greenhouse gas forcing and climate change
3. The role of clouds and aerosols in climate
4. Interplay between cloud properties, cloud radiative fields, and cloud dynamics
5. Effects of anthropogenic pollution on clouds and climate