由于经济规模的迅速扩大和城市化进程的加快,都市霾现象或者是灰霾天气日趋严重,霾与雾的区分成为一个非常现实,又迫切需要解决的问题。通常在平面时已达到饱和的水汽压,对相当于球面的云雾滴来讲就是未饱和的,那样云雾滴就会蒸发;在水汽条件不变时,云雾滴由于蒸发而变小,导致它的平衡水汽压升高,则更易蒸发掉。在不饱和大气中小于数微米的云雾滴必然蒸发,而且伴随着蒸发云雾滴尺度会进一步变小,导致曲率越来越大,蒸发速率越来越快。过去错误认为凝结核可以在低相对湿度情况下产生凝结生成雾滴的观点,是忽视了粒子曲率作用的结果,将实验室大颗粒(常常达毫米量级)的吸湿性特征,延用至次微米粒子造成的。降温是达到饱和形成雾滴的即重要又主要的物理过程,云雾是低温下饱和气块的可见标志。在云雾中必然存在凝结或凝华过程,因而必然伴随着潜热释放,这就使云雾内的温度高于环境,在云雾内必然盛行微弱的上升气流,不可能是下沉气流,这些宏观过程在霾层内是不存在的,因而成为识别霾与雾的重要的宏观动力条件。存对历史资料进行统计时,在排除降水、吹雪、雪暴、沙尘暴、扬沙、浮尘、烟幕、等等视程障碍现象的情况下,通过调试相对湿度,使得雾与轻雾反映自然的年际与年代际气候波动,而霾反映由于人类活动而引起的趋势性变化,其限值大体在90%左右,与美国和英国讨论霾影响能见度的长期变化趋势的研究中使用的相对湿度限值相同,他们都去除了相对湿度〉90%的资料,只研究了相对湿度〈90%时的能见度变化趋势。进行相对湿度订正才能确保资料的高质量。近年来由于人类活动大气气溶胶污染日趋严重,1980年代以来大幅增加的霾日,绝大部分是由于人类活动影响的
Haze is an important indicator of air quality while fog has definite meanings for weather. By statistical analysis of observation data and excluding cases of precipitation, snow drift, snowstorm, sand storm, sand dust and smoke fog which cause low visibility, the threshold of relative humidity was adjusted to identify fog/light fog to make it follow natural annual and decadal climate variations. Haze which can reflect trends linking to human activities was set at a threshold of 90% relative humidity, which was the same as that proposed by American and British researchers in their study on long-term variation trend of the effect of haze on visibility, to ensure high quality of data. Haze days had dramatically increased since 1980s, most of which were due to human activity related pollution of aerosol fine particles. Based on the findings, a conceptual model was proposed to distinguish fog from haze, and standard for observing fog and haze and criteria for warning signals for haze weather in some provinces were presented.