Abstract
Stellar occultation techniques are a powerful means of remotely sensing the Earth's atmosphere from space. In this paper, we show that a unique combination of extinctive and refractive stellar occultation methods can be used to retrieve atmospheric composition from the lower thermosphere down to the upper troposphere. The extinction measurements provide the composition information, while the refraction data are used to infer the total density, pressure, and temperature profiles in the lower atmosphere. Precise, simultaneous measurement of the total density profile in particular allows both Rayleigh scattering and refraction effects to be accurately accounted for in the interpretation of the lower atmosphere extinction measurements and also provides for direct calculation of mixing ratios. This combined technique has been successfully demonstrated using stellar occultation data obtained by the Ultraviolet and Visible Imagers and Spectrographic Imagers (UVISI) on the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) satellite. To illustrate the potential of the method, we present O 2 and O 3 profiles retrieved from two example occultations observed by MSX/UVISI in the polar vortex region during formation of the seasonal ozone hole in October 1996.
Published Version
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