Paper
31 October 1996 Retrieval of stratospheric temperature profiles in the presence of non-LTE radiance contributions
George H. Lindquist, William B. Cook, Hilary E. Snell
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Abstract
A sounder using a high-finesse Fabry-Perot etalon offers substantial potential to extract temperature profiles from the stratosphere atmosphere. The multi-order etalon sounder (MOES) is such an instrument. Its extremely high spectral resolution makes it possible to selectively observe emission at the very line centers and near shoulders of individual CO2 lines. However, the radiances at the centers of these lines can contain large non-LTE contributions originating at much higher altitudes. At high altitudes, the non-equilibrium absorption and re-radiation of solar illumination enhances the vibrational temperature compared to the kinetic temperature. The kinetic temperature profile can only be estimated from the complex line radiance spectrum by relating the observed vibrational temperature to the probable kinetic temperature. The effective separation of layer contributions requires that the instrument be designed so that (1) its dynamic range preserves the much larger range of expected radiances and (2) its spectral response function is very well known so that the line wing radiances can be accurately determined in the presence of large line center radiances. This paper discusses the retrieval of stratospheric temperatures in terms of typical measured radiance covariances, the required solar illumination model and a sensor suitable for routine temperature profile retrieval.
© (1996) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
George H. Lindquist, William B. Cook, and Hilary E. Snell "Retrieval of stratospheric temperature profiles in the presence of non-LTE radiance contributions", Proc. SPIE 2830, Optical Spectroscopic Techniques and Instrumentation for Atmospheric and Space Research II, (31 October 1996); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.256112
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KEYWORDS
Sensors

Fabry–Perot interferometers

Molybdenum

Spectral resolution

Absorption

Calibration

Fringe analysis

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