High Spectral Resolution Infrared Remote Sensing for Earth's Weather and Climate Studies

Describing the challenge that scientists face in the development of an accurate, long-term observational data set to study global change, this monograph explores the wide range of measurements and observations that will be required to provide a greater degree of accuracy and resolution.

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One of the major challenges facing scientific research on Earth in the next decade and beyond is the development of an accurate, long-term observational data set to study global change. To accomplish this, a wide range of observations will be required to provide both new measurements, not previously attainable, and measurements with a greater degree of accuracy and resolution than those currently available. Among the parameters that are presently retrieved from satellite vertical sounding observations, temperature and moisture profiles are the most important for the description of the thermodynamic state of the medium. Other parameters, like those describing the cloud fields, the surface state or the conditions close to the surface, are also key parameters for meteorology and climatology. A new generation of high spectral atmospheric sounders in the infrared has recently been designed to provide both new and more accurate data about the atmosphere, land and oceans for application to climate studies.
Among the important observations that these instruments should contribute to the climate data set, are day and night global measurements of atmospheric temperature profiles; relative humidity profiles; cloud field parameters; total ozone burden of the atmosphere; and the distribution of minor atmospheric gases (methane, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide).