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Overview
ATSC 5500 introduces graduate students to the fundamental physics of atmospheric radiation and optics. The course covers the emission, absorption, and scattering of electromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere, with an emphasis on solving the radiative transfer equation. Students explore how light interacts with atmospheric particles through Rayleigh and geometric optics, as well as how polydisperse particles affect bulk scattering properties.
The course also examines absorption by gases, focusing on line shapes and the correlated-k method. Students study radiative processes across the spectrum, including solar and thermal infrared radiation, and learn key approximations such as two-stream and single-scattering models. Practical applications include radiative forcing, satellite remote sensing, and optical atmospheric phenomena.
Instruction includes lectures, practical exercises, and projects. By the end, students gain the ability to analyze radiative processes and assess uncertainties in radiative transfer modeling for climate and remote sensing applications.
The figure shows a tree of atmospheric radiation, illustrating the importance of fundamental physics and radiative transfer theory in the applications of atmospheric radiation.
Objectives
This course introduces the fundamentals of atmospheric radiation and optics, including scattering, absorption, and emission in the surface-atmosphere system and practical solutions of light-scattering and phenomenological radiative transfer theories. Graduate students will build a solid basis for understanding radiative processes in atmospheres and their applications in atmospheric science, such as climate simulations and atmospheric remote sensing.
Goals
The goal of this course is for the students to understand the fundamentals of atmospheric radiative transfer and light-scattering theories and to be able to interpret the radiative processes in atmospheric science applications from a physics perspective.
Student Learning Outcomes: The students will be able to
Understand how scattering, absorption, and emission play a role in the radiative transfer process in the atmosphere and how these radiative processes are treated in practical solutions of the radiative transfer equation.
Understand how the single-scattering properties vary with the characteristics of an atmospheric particle and the practical methods to obtain the analytical and numerical solutions of their properties.
Demonstrate the ability to communicate the topics of atmospheric radiation and optics clearly and concisely from the physics perspective.
Demonstrate the ability to assess the results of practical radiative transfer applications and to discuss potential uncertainties/biases due to simplifications of radiative transfer processes in the applications.
Topics
The topics covered in this course include (subject to change):
Definitions and basic radiative transfer theory
Scattering and absorption by atmospheric particles
Absorption and emission by atmospheric gases
Principle of atmospheric radiative transfer
Applications in remote sensing and climate science
Anonymous student feedback (2024 Fall)
We have great lecture notes in this class. The class is helpful in understanding radiation theory from a particle scale to macrophysical scale and has good application examples as well. The homeworks are helpful in addressing the class content and are in an appropriate amount.
I believe the lecture notes were extremely useful for understanding and following along in lecture. The printed notes were essential for my growth in the class.
Using images taken of the real atmosphere to explain the concepts really helps
I appreciate how you provide lecture notes. Very clear. It is nice you explain practical applications. It is better to address them in each lecture note thoroughly.
I really liked the format of the notes- I felt they presented a very clear and unambiguous catalog of what would be covered in the chapter, and having them on-hand allowed me to focus on the lecture without worrying about missing some specific thing because I forgot to write it down. I also really enjoyed the RTM elements/labs, and wish we could have utilized those more within the course! The unfortunate scheduling this semester seemed like it really made that aspect challenging.
The lecture notes for filling in equations was much appreciated, homework was somewhat interactive.
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