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Figure 2.13 Downwelling longwave radiation for a typical mid-latitude winter atmo-
sphere ( a ) and summer atmosphere ( b ). The dashed line is the Planck curve for 273
and 294 K, respectively. The inset shows the full spectral range of longwave radia-
tion. Data computed with the Reference Forward Model ( http://www.atm.ox.ac.uk/
RFM/ , based on GENLN2) (Edwards, 1992 ), using the HITRAN2008 absorption
line database (Rothman et al., 2009 ).
range between approximately 8 and 13 μm, the so-called 'atmospheric window'. The
absence of absorption lines in the atmospheric window implies that the atmosphere
(without clouds) neither emits nor absorbs radiation in this wavelength range. Fig-
ure 2.12a depicts downward emission of longwave radiation from a cloudless atmo-
sphere. For that case, incoming longwave radiation consists only of radiation in the
wavelength ranges 3-8 and 13-100 μm, denoted by L 0 .
Figure 2.13 illustrates the spectral composition of downwelling longwave radia-
tion for mid-latitude conditions during winter and summer. The irst thing to note is
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