Temperature soundings with partially scanned interferograms.

The information contained in a complete interferogram and in a spectra are equivalent, but within a portion of an interferogram the two contain different information and cannot be directly compared. The partial interferogram provides information about particular types of structure within the spectra and may be better suited to a particular task than the spectra which contains much information of no value to the particular task. The advantages of partially scanned interferograms for remote soundings of atmospheric temperature are discussed, and several examples are given. These suggest that partially scanned interferograms can provide more detailed and versatile information than the presently used techniques. In particular, they seem able to cope with the temperatures near the ground and temperature inversions.