Book Description

Optical instruments are routinely employed to obtain a wealth of information about the atmosphere, including its composition, temperature, and winds. A bewildering variety of optical instruments have been proposed over the years, making it difficult to decide which instrument should be chosen to make a specific measurement. Spectral Imaging of the Atmosphere traces the historical development of both spectral and imaging methods and places them in a unified framework relevant to observations of the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and thermosphere. The underlying concepts of various measurement methodologies are presented and paired with appropriate applications. A selection of specific spectral imaging instruments, appropriate to illustrate each conceptual type, is described in detail.Shepherd's work provides both scientists and engineers with an in-depth understanding of the fundamental concepts they need to know in order to plan a program of atmospheric measurements. Expected future methods and developments are also presented. Problems designed to test and enhance the reader's understanding of the material are included in each chapter.Provides a unique and unifed approach to the methodology of optical atmospheric observations from the troposphere through the thermosphere, which allows the practitioner to choose the best instrument for a given measurement.Describes state-of-the-art atmospheric observing instruments with an eye to future developments.Includes problems designed to test and enhance students' unerstanding of the material presented in each chapter.Contains concise descriptions of selected current and planned spectral imagers, including the Fabry-Perot spectrometer, the Michelson interferometer and the diffraction grating spectrometer.Written from a scientific perspective in an engineering framework, this work is accessible to atmospheric scientists and instrumentation engineers alike.