Equivalence Method for Retrieving Stratospheric Constituent Profiles from Infrared Solar Occultation Data

Abstract

Mixing ratios of stratospheric constituents can be inferred from satellite- or balloon-based infrared solar occultation measurements. The nonlinear system of equations that relates the measurements to the mixing ratios is often solved by the ?onion-peeling? technique. We show how to implement onion-peeling with an algorithm in which limb paths are represented by equivalent homogeneous paths. The essential computations are confined to the tangent layers instead of the full multilayer limb paths. The algorithm yields the same solutions as conventional onion-peeling but requires significantly less computation time.