Methods and apparatus for passive tropospheric measurments utilizing a single band of frequencies adjacent to a selected millimeter wave water vapor line

An apparatus for passive tropospheric measurement utilizing a single band of frequencies on and adjacent to a selected millimeter wave water vapor line comprising:

• a single millimeter wave emission receiver for sensing signals indicative of brightness temperatures in a millimeter waveband in the region of a selected predictable atmospheric thermal radiation emission line and providing output signals indicative thereof;
• a link for connection with various data sources selected from a plurality of available sources to receive data signals therefrom;
• a processor receiving and processing said output signals from said receiver and said data signals at said link, said processor including a trainable retrieval stage for training and applying retrieval coefficients or functions to processed signals and responsive thereto obtaining an output indicative of selected atmospheric characteristics of interest;
• and
• output means associated with said processor for communicating said output.

A method for making passive tropospheric measurements utilizing a single band of frequencies on and adjacent to a selected millimeter wave water vapor line comprising the steps of:

• remotely receiving a large number of frequencies across a single millimeter waveband adjacent to a selected predictable atmospheric wave water vapor emission line at the measurement device and providing output indicative thereof;
• processing said output to provide brightness temperature measurement data corresponding to said output;
• collecting training sets including thermodynamic profiles and modeled radiometer correlated observables;
• training a retrieval method utilizing said training sets;
• and
• processing said measurement data utilizing said retrieval method to provide thermodynamic profiles of interest.