Atmospheric Aerosol

:: Section 9

Visibility Effect of Atmospheric Aerosol

II. Visual Range

A more practical term to characterize visibility is visual range, which expresses how far one can see in a given direction, or the distance at which an object is barely discernible.

For a dark object viewed against the horizon during daylight, the visual range Lv can be obtained as a simple inverse function of extinction coefficient (assuming the threshold of brightness contrast is 0.02):

What are the key parameters that influence visual range?