The subject of “atmospheric radiation” includes not only fundamental theories on atmospheric gaseous absorption and the scattering and radiative transfer of particles (molecules, cloud, and aerosols), but also their applications in weather, climate, and atmospheric remote sensing, and is an essential part of the atmospheric sciences. This review includes two parts (Part I and Part II); following the first part on gaseous absorption and particle scattering, this part (Part II) reports the progress that has been made in radiative transfer theories, models, and their common applications, focusing particularly on the contributions from Chinese researchers. The recent achievements on radiative transfer models and methods developed for weather and climate studies and for atmospheric remote sensing are firstly reviewed. Then, the associated applications, such as surface radiation estimation, satellite remote sensing algorithms, radiative parameterization for climate models, and radiative-forcing related climate change studies are summarized, which further reveals the importance of radiative transfer theories and models.

Atmospheric radiation is a major branch of atmospheric physics that encompasses the fundamental theories of atmospheric absorption, particle scattering (aerosols and clouds), and radiative transfer. Specifically, the simulations of atmospheric gaseous absorption and scattering properties of particles are the essential components of atmospheric radiative transfer models. Atmospheric radiation has important applications in weather, climate, data assimilation, remote sensing, and atmospheric detection studies. In Part I, a comprehensive review of the progress in the field of gas absorption and particle scattering research over the past 30 years with a particular emphasis on the contributions from Chinese scientists is presented. The review of gas absorption includes the construction of absorption databases, the impact of different atmospheric absorption algorithms on radiative calculations, and their applications in weather and climate models and remote sensing. The review on particle scattering starts with the theoretical and computational methods and subsequently explores the optical modeling of aerosols and clouds in remote sensing and atmospheric models. Additionally, the paper discusses potential future research directions in this field.