Haze

Particles suspended in air, reducing visibility by scattering light; often a mixture of aerosols and photochemical smog.

Many aerosols increase in size with increasing relative humidity due to deliquescence, drastically decreasing visibility. On Köhler curve plots of saturation relative humidity versus aerosol particle radius, equilibrium haze particles are to the left of the peak, while growing cloud droplets are to the right. Many haze formations are caused by the presence of an abundance of condensation nuclei which may grow in size, due to a variety of causes, and become mist, fog, or cloud. Distinction is sometimes drawn between dry haze and damp haze, largely on the basis of differences in optical effects produced by the smaller particles (dry haze) and larger particles (damp haze), which develop from slow condensation upon the hygroscopic haze particles. Dry haze particles, with diameters of the order of 0.1 μm, are small enough to scatter shorter wavelengths of light preferentially though not according to the inverse fourth-power law of Rayleigh scattering. Such haze particles produce a bluish color when the haze is viewed against a dark background, for dispersion allows only the slightly bluish scattered light to reach the eye. The same type of haze, when viewed against a light background, appears as a yellowish veil, for here the principal effect is the removal of the bluer components from the light originating in the distant light-colored background. Haze may be distinguished by this same effect from mist, which yields only a gray obscuration, since the particle sizes are too large to yield appreciable differential scattering of various wavelengths.
See smaze, arctic haze;
compare particulates.

An aggregation of sufficiently many atoms or molecules that it can be assigned macroscopic properties such as volume, density, pressure, and temperature.

Haze occurring with conditions of low relative humidity.