An Analytical Transformation for Remote Sensing of Clear-Column Atmospheric Temperature Profiles

Abstract

An exact analytical transformation is presented for the remote sensing of atmospheric temperature profiles in the presence of clouds. The transformation permits direct retrieval of clear-column temperature profiles without the need to predetermine the corresponding clear-column radiances. A numerical illustration is given for simulated observations in the 15 µm C02 band in the terrestrial atmosphere. The resulting method is numerically very fast and is especially suitable for handling the massive amount of data needed for numerical weather prediction.