Carbon dioxide is the largest global pollutant by mass and atmospheric concentrations are increasing at about 0.7 ppM ..nu.. per year. The influence of this change on the atmospheric temperature structure is unknown. One method for investigating this is to compute the radiative heating rate as the local imbalance of radiative fluxes, for each altitude and for different CO/sub 2/ mixing ratios, keeping other factors constant. This manuscript is a discussion of the application of this approach. Data of the local rate of temperature change produced by infrared radiative divergence due to CO/sub 2/, H/sub 2/O, and O/sub 3/ are presented. At lower levels the net cooling rate was slightly diminished while at upper levels it was significantly increased by a change in CO/sub 2/ from 320 to 400 ppM..nu... The physical reasons for the two changes differ and are discussed. To place the CO/sub 2/ contribution to temperature in perspective it was compared with other radiative components (H/sub 2/O and O/sub 3/) at two levels (5 to 10 mb and 850 to 1000 mb). Clear skies were assumed. Carbon dioxide was secondary to water vapor in the troposphere and dominant in the lower stratosphere. When searching for a potentialmore » influence of global pollution on the tropospheric temperature the author suggested it would be wise to pay careful attention to the water cycle and its possible modification, particularly as it enters also through the effect of latent heat.« less
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Newell et al. (1970) studied this question.