Abstract

The externally-viewed thermal emission spectrum of the atmosphere may be expressed as an integral transform of the Planck intensity and a kernel weight function which depends on the line character of the sampled frequency interval. The radiances R_i = R(p_i) of the N sensing channels can be considered as functions of p_i, the pressure at the weighting function peak. A continuous R vs z = −ln p curve can be constructed using a suitable interpolation scheme. The forward problem consists of a mapping of the Planck intensity into the radiance profile, while the inverse problem infers the Planck intensity (temperature) as a function of pressure from the radiance profile.

© 1983 Optical Society of America