ABSTRACT
Although the atmosphere affects the fate of pollutants via various sink processes, it experiences signicant short-term or long-term pollution-induced changes. These may be local, regional, or global in scale, depending on factors such as sources, long-range transport, movement into the stratosphere, and accumulation of long-lived pollutants. Atmospheric effects may include changes in (1) visibility, (2) urban climate, (3) quantity and frequency of rainfall and associated meteorological phenomena, (4) atmospheric deposition, (5) stratospheric ozone (O3) depletion, and (6) global climate change. The signicance of these effects may be slight (visibility impairment) to potentially very serious (stratospheric O3 depletion and changes in climate).
