The propagation of ultrashort,intense laser pulses in the atmosphere have many important applications in the fields such as remote sensing, electronic countermeasures, and induced electric discharges. It has been theoretically analyzed.The linear and nonlinear effects, such as dispersion, nonlinear self-focusing, stimulated Raman scattering, multiphoton and tunneling ionization, pulse energy depletion due to ionization, relativistic focusing,and ponderomotively excited plasma wakefields, are discussed. A set of equations describing ultrashort, intense laser pulses propagation in the atmosphere is given, and the equations provide a basis for the future study.