Timofeev, Y., and G. Nerobelov, Satellite Investigations of the Atmospheric Gas Composition, Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics, 2024, Vol. 60, No. 6, pp. 660–688
Abstract:
The gas composition of the Earth’s atmosphere largely determines numerous weather and climate processes and phenomena. The importance of studying the composition of the atmosphere stimulated in recent decades the creation of global and regional observation systems for water vapor, ozone and the substances depleting it, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and dozens of contaminant gases. A significant part in the global monitoring of the gas composition of the atmosphere is played by satellite observation systems which make it possible to obtain regular, global, and regional high-quality (in terms of accuracy and spatial resolution) data on its gas composition. The review is devoted to the analysis of present-day remote satellite passive methods for determining the gas composition of the atmosphere and the main results obtained to date.
A modern classification of passive and active satellite methods, the physical and mathematical foundations of passive methods, the main characteristics of the used orbits of space carriers, and the types of geometry of satellite observations are given. The advantages and disadvantages of various satellite passive methods using measurements of atmospheric transparency characteristics (the eclipse method), Earth’s own radiation, as well as reflected and scattered solar radiation are analyzed for various satellite measurement geometries in a wide spectral region from UV to radio waves. A brief history of the creation of special modern satellite equipment is given, as well as their characteristics–information content, altitude measurement ranges, errors, and vertical resolution. Numerous results of global and regional monitoring of the atmospheric gas composition and examples of their use in various problems of atmospheric physics and climatology are presented.