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Content archived on 2024-04-30

Modelling Of The Non-LTE Chemical Kinetics And Radiation Coupling In The Earth's Atmosphere

Objective



The proposed research is concerned with the development of a fundamentally new approach for the modelling of chemical kinetic and radiative transfer processes in the atmosphere to cater for situations where non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) effects occur. Such issues are important in the determination of atmospheric composition using satellite measurements and in understanding basic chemical kinetic processes. The new approach is a unique quantum level chemical reaction model which does not use rate expressions for the individual transition probabilities. Instead, it is based on statistical thermodynamics using the concept of Maximum Entropy (ME) to determine the outcome of a multi-species. Multi-step reaction and multi-level energy exchange mechanism. It offers the benefit of fully coupling the interdependent energy exchange and chemical reaction probability and can cater for complex conditions. It overcome several limitations of current atmospheric chemical kinetic schemes, natobly chemical rates generally assume LTE internal energy distributions and also the implicit assumption that post reaction internal energy disposal is also LTE. In addition, in existing schemes it is usually only possible to treat a subset of the reactions since a fully coupled state-to-state rate model for all of the reactions is prohibitively computer intensive. Since the ME scheme provides NLTE excited state information directly, it can be linked to transition probability models. This makes it especially attractive to use in schemes where radiative transport and coupling needs to be considered. It is expected that the new model will lead to a more accurate determination of atmospheric chemistry kinetic processes and composition and give a better understanding of the importance Of NLTE effects and hence contribute to global change science. A preliminary review and demonstration of the scheme is proposed in the exploratory phase, which will include consieration of other atmospheric NLTE processes to take advantage of available measurement data that would be useful for validation. These include middle atmosphere IR radiative coupling and the influence of lightning on the Ozone concentration in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere.

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Call for proposal

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Coordinator

Fluid Gravity Engineering Ltd
EU contribution
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Address
Chiltlee Manor Haslemere Road
GU30 7AZ Liphook
United Kingdom

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Total cost
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Participants (1)