OBTAINING THE CUMULATIVE K-DISTRIBUTION OF A GAS-MIXTURE FROM THOSE OF ITS COMPONENTS

The convolution theorem for obtaining the cumulative k-distribution of a gas mixture requires stronger assumptions than the multiplicative property of hand transmission; thus new experimental investigations of its effectiveness are undertaken. The convolution is found to be a useful speed optimization of k-distribution calculations at high pressures. For low pressures a variety of mixing methods are compared, all relying on the fact that stratospheric lines are too narrow to overlap. The optimal altitude for changing over from the convolution to one of these other methods is strongly correlated with the logarithm of the ratio of linewidth to line spacing. Some spectrally-integrated outputs of the resulting split-level method are compared with another method requiring much less computation.