Atmospheric proton and neutron spectra at energies above 1 GeV

We discuss an effective numerical method for solving the transport equations for cosmic ray nucleons in the atmosphere. It is demonstrated that the nucleon attenuation lengths are strongly energy and depth dependent due to the non-power-law behavior of the primary spectrum, growth of the total inelastic cross sections with energy, and scaling violation in the nucleon-nucleus interactions. The numerical results are compared with the available experimental data.