Abstract

With the advent of higher resolution and sensitivity instruments and high precision technology, the remote sensing of the middle and upper atmosphere, especially from satellite hmb sounding, has become a reality, and nowadays it is a powerful technique to derive the temperature structure and the minor constituents abundances. It is precisely in the remote sensing of these upper regions where Non-LTE effects play a more important role because at these heights the excited states, which originate the infrared emission to be measured, start depasturing from their Boltzmann’s populations. Thus, Non-LTE effects usually impose the upper limit of the retrieval of these atmospheric parameters by remote sensing and, in other cases, the concourse of Non-LTE studies is required to correctly retrieve the atmospheric temperature and species abundances.

© 1990 Optical Society of America