Atmospheric refraction effects in Earth remote sensing

Abstract Just as refraction moves the apparent positions of stars from their true ones, it slightly distorts the view of Earth from space, as well as affecting the angle at which sunlight or moonlight illuminates its surface. The astronomer's problem is to correct the apparent position of a star for refraction, relating the position as observed from Earth to the true position. By contrast, the space observer's problem is to obtain the true (refracted) surface zenith angle z′ of illumination or of viewing, when the zenith angle z0 of the ray in space is known, and to correct for the apparent horizontal displacement of the surface point being viewed. This paper solves the problem of the refraction angle for a spherical atmosphere by a simple, analytic solution, depending only on the surface index of refraction μ0 namely: sin(z0)=μ0 sin(z′). The problem of the apparent horizontal displacement of the point viewed is also solved analytically, but approximately, because the result depends weakly on an assumed vertical structure of the atmosphere. The results are useful primarily in cases where observation must be done at large zenith angle, or low Sun angle.