Abstract
SEVERAL communications have appeared in NATURE on the subject of atmospheric haze. It would be interesting to know whether the writers consider the haze which they have described as identical in substance with that which I would call ordinary atmospheric haze. The haze of these writers is a haze taking the visible form of layers or bands. The haze to which I refer has under ordinary circumstances no visible form at all. We are conscious of its presence by its effect in diminishing the transparency of the air. Everyone knows that, quite apart from fog, or smoke, or dust, or low cloud, or falling rain, the transparency of the air varies very greatly at different times. In our climate there is nearly always more or less of atmospheric haze, the rare exceptions proving the rule; and the haze may be so dense as to render terrestrial objects invisible at a distance of a very few miles. Celestial objects may also be obscured by the same cause. Not to speak of the varying brightness and varying colour of the sun at sunset (in the production of which effects another cause may co-operate), there are occasions on which the sun long before sunset is shorn of his beams through the intervention of a low general haze, the hygrometric conditions at the time being such as to preclude the idea of fog, to which indeed the haze referred to bears little resemblance.
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BURDER, G. Alpine Haze. Nature 39, 248 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/039248a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/039248a0
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