1. Atmospheric Sounding Temperature and water vapor profiling Atmospheric sounding Atmospheric sounding is retrieving vertical profiles of temperature trace- gas concentrations, especially water vapor and ozone. February 17, 2003

3. http://orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/soundings/skewt/html/skewhome.html

5. Scwartzchild’s Equation – RTE for no-scattering L 0 : radiance emerging from the Earth’s surface  (z): vertical transmittance from height z to space. T(z): vertical profile of temperature B [T(z)]: Planck function profile. Weighting function - W

7. Idealised transmittance profiles and weighting functions at two frequencies with different absorption coefficients. Vertical coordinate: scale height = - loge(pressure).

10. Left- illustrating the attenuation of upwelling radiation emitted from three heights in the atmosphere. Right-the correspondin g vertical profile of the contribution to the emission to space.

11. TOVS normalized weighting functions (from Smith et al. 1979)

13. AMSU normalised weighting functions.

14. A selection of weighting functions for several bands of the interferometer proposed for the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) instrument.