HITRAN on the Web

Guest   |  

Absorption cross sections

This section presents the absorption cross sections for various molecules from HITRAN databank. These data are obtained from relatively high-resolution, high-quality, laboratory observations. More detailed information about HITRAN's absorption cross-sections is available here.

The list of molecules is located in the left part of the viewport (Fig. 1). To select the molecule click over the title of the molecule of your interes.


Fig. 1. The page of absorption cross-sections

The right part of the viewport  can contain several tabs. The default  Survey tab appears immediately after selection of the molecule. This tab contains the table of available absorption cross sections of selected molecule with their properties such as designation, wavenumber range, temperature and pressure in which measurements were taken, broadener, instrument resolution number of values in the measurement. In addition, the leftmost column of the table contains a check boxes that allows you to select the cross-sections for building of graphical dependences XS(WN). The graph opens in the Plot tab just after click the Plot selected button. The buttons  and in the rightmost column of the table serve to open the tab for view a file of absorption cross-sectione and to download this file to the user's computer.

Format of numerical representation

Files displayed in View tabs and downloaded to a user's computer contain several header lines beginning with " # " symbol. Header lines give a verbal description of the file contents and the conditions under which measurements were taken. Below are the data columns. The data contains 2 columns. The first one contains the values of the wavenumber WN, and the second one the values of XS(WN).