This dissertation has seven chapters. Chapter two discusses the background physics relevant to the transfer of solar radiation in Earth's middle and lower atmosphere. This includes absorption and single-scattering processes, the different scattering mechanisms, and how these are incorporated into a solution to the equation of radiative transfer. Also included is a description of aerosol masses. A description of the NASA ER-2, recent ER-2 campaigns, and in particular the Composition and Photodissociative Flux Measurement (CPFM) instrument, is given in Chapter three. The radiative transfer model is described in Chapter four. Specifically, the phase matrix is introduced as is the Fourier expansion of the phase matrix. The successive orders of scattering solution technique is then discussed along with the spherical corrections to it.
Chapter five deals with stratospheric aerosols and their retrieval. A sensitivity study carried out to address how different properties of an aerosol mass effect limb radiance (or light scattered from the horizon) and polarization is presented. This was done using the radiative transfer model simulating CPFM observing geometry. Some of the properties examined include the thickness and altitude of the aerosol layer, radius and width of the aerosol size distribution, functional form of the size distribution, and the refractive index of the aerosols. Based on these results, a procedure for the retrieval of some of these properties is suggested.
The retrieval of trace gases is described in Chapter six. The first part of this chapter describes the spectroscopic technique for detecting and quantifying the density of various atmospheric trace species, specifically ozone, NO2, and BrO. This technique is then applied to nadir (looking below the aircraft) and limb CPFM measurements. The final section deals with the application of these measurements to the polar sunrise ozone depletion phenomena.
Finally, in Chapter seven, conclusions are presented. Also included are possible improvements to this work and further applications for CPFM measurements.