Atmospheric window

Τhe absorption bands of Earth's atmosphere (grey colour) delimit its atmospheric windows (middle panel) and the effect they have on both downgoing solar radiation and upgoing thermal radiation emitted near the surface is shown in the top panel. The individual absorption spectra of major greenhouse gases plus Rayleigh scattering are shown in the lower panel.[1]

An atmospheric window is a region of the electromagnetic spectrum that can pass through the atmosphere of Earth. The optical, infrared and radio windows comprise the three main atmospheric windows.[2] The windows provide direct channels for Earth's surface to receive electromagnetic energy from the Sun, and for thermal radiation from the surface to leave to space.[3] 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.[4][5] In other fields of science and technology, such as radio astronomy[6] and remote sensing,[7] the term is used as a hypernym, covering the whole electromagnetic spectrum as in the present article.

  1. ^ "The Atmospheric Window". National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  2. ^ "Introduction to the Electromagnetic Spectrum | Science Mission Directorate". science.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2021-12-28.
  3. ^ Kiehl, J. T.; Trenberth, Kevin E. (1 February 1997). "Earth's Annual Global Mean Energy Budget". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 78 (2): 197–208. Bibcode:1997BAMS...78..197K. doi:10.1175/1520-0477(1997)078<0197:eagmeb>2.0.co;2.
  4. ^ Cotton, William R.; Pielke, Roger A. (2007). Human impacts on weather and climate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-521-84086-6. OCLC 466742997.
  5. ^ Rohli, Robert V; Vega, Anthony J (2012). Climatology. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. p. 287. ISBN 978-0-7637-9101-8. OCLC 569552317.
  6. ^ Burke, Bernard F. (2019). An introduction to radio astronomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-107-18941-6. OCLC 1199628889.
  7. ^ Joseph, George (2005). Fundamentals of remote sensing. Hyderabad: Universities Press, India. p. 43. ISBN 978-81-7371-535-8. OCLC 474734434.