Abstract
Atmospheric water vapour is treated as an equilibrium mixture of gas-phase water clusters, (H2O) i , using recent precise quantum-chemical data on these species. It is shown that within a typical atmospheric temperature/humidity profile, the cluster populations in the Earth's atmosphere decrease with increasing height, being of the order of magnitude of 0.1 mg/m3 and 0.1 μg/m3 for the water dimer and trimer, respectively, in the atmospheric pressure region of 700–800 mb.
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Dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the preparation of the first artificial snow crystal by Prof. Ukitiro Nakaya at the Hokkaido University on 12 March, 1936 (see, e.g., Nakaya et al. (1938)).
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Slanina, Z. A theoretical evaluation of water oligomer populations in the Earth's atmosphere. J Atmos Chem 6, 185–190 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00053854
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00053854