Retrieval of atmospheric O(3), HNO(3), CFC-11, and CFC-12 profiles from MIPAS-B-89 limb emission spectra.

During the night from May 17 to May 18, 1989, the first of four flights of the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding, Balloon-borne version (MIPAS-B) instrument took place from the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales balloon-launching site at Aire-sur-l'Adour (France, 44° N latitude). From approximately 33 km float altitude, stratospheric and tropospheric limb infrared emission spectra have been recorded by this novel type of fast-scanning interferometer. Although the measured spectra did not reach the expected quality and the a priori information on the corresponding viewing directions was coarse, the data were processed successfully with a retrieval algorithm specially adapted for application to noisydata.

Instabilities in retrieval of atmospheric trace gas profiles caused by the use of atmospheric level models.

When inverse radiative transfer algorithms are applied to atmospheric level models rather than to layer models, the stability of retrieval may significantly deteriorate.