DETECTION OF NITRIC-ACID AND NITRIC OXIDES IN THE TERRESTRIAL ATMOSPHERE IN THE MIDDLE-INFRARED SPECTRAL REGION

A proposal for combined space and groundbased observations of the vert ical distributions and the column densities of nitric acid and nitric oxide concentrations in the earth's atmosphere is discussed. We focus on the aspects that are particular to the idea of correlative measurem ents: geometrical considerations, simulations of the solar absorption spectra in the middle-infrared region corresponding to the different o bservational geometries, and the associated retrieval methods. These s tudies are done specifically for the Belgian-French experiment MIRAS ( MIR Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer) onboard the Russian Space Stati on MIR and correlative ground-based FTIR measurements in the Tatra mou ntains.