Radiative heat transfer in coupled Mie and Rayleigh atmosphere

Expressions describing radiative heat transfer in a coupled Mie and Rayleigh scattering atmosphere have been obtained by employing the modified two-stream approximation. The effect of tropospheric aerosols on the albedo as well as on heating rates in the wavelength region from 0.3 to 2.0 microns is studied. The present study indicates that the distinction between cooling or warming of the earth-atmosphere system for a realistic aerosol model proposed by McClatchey will depend on the surface reflectivity being smaller or larger than approximately 0.37. The effect of aerosols on the heating rate close to the surface has the same order of magnitude as atmospheric water vapor.