Probing star formation and ISM properties using galaxy disk inclination
  III: Evolution in dust opacity and clumpiness between redshift 0.0 < z < 0.7
  constrained from UV to NIR
  (Abridged) In this paper, we use the Tuffs et al. attenuation - inclination
models in ultraviolet (UV), optical, and near-infrared (NIR) bands to
investigate the average global dust properties in galaxies as a function of
stellar mass$M_{*}$, stellar mass surface density $\mu_{*}$, star-formation
rate $SFR$, specific star-formation rate $sSFR$, star-formation main-sequence
offset $dMS$, and star-formation rate surface density $\Sigma_{SFR}$ at
redshifts $z \sim 0$ and $z \sim 0.7$. We use star-forming galaxies from SDSS
($\sim$ 20000) and GAMA ($\sim$ 2000) to form our low-z sample at $0.04 < z <
0.1$ and star-forming galaxies from COSMOS ($\sim$ 2000) for the sample at $0.6
<z < 0.8$. We find that galaxies at $z \sim 0.7$ have higher optical depth
$\tau_{B}^{f}$ and clumpiness $F$ than galaxies at $z \sim 0$. The increase in
$F$ hints that the stars of $z \sim 0.7$ galaxies are less likely to escape
their birth cloud, which might indicate that the birth clouds are larger. We
also found that $\tau_{B}^{f}$ increases with $M_{*}$ and $\mu_{*}$independent
of sample and therefore redshift. We found no clear trends in $\tau_{B}^{f}$ or
$F$ with $SFR$, which could imply that the dust mass distribution is
independent of $SFR$. In turn, this would imply that the balance of dust
formation and destruction is independent of the $SFR$. Based on an analysis of
the inclination-dependence of the Balmer decrement, we find that reproducing
the Balmer line emission requires not only a completely optically thick dust
component associated with star forming regions, as in the standard Tuffs et al.
model, but an extra component of optically thin dust within the birth clouds.
This new component implies the existence of dust inside HII regions that
attenuates the Balmer emission before it escapes through gaps in the birth
cloud and we find it is more important in high-mass galaxies.
