Mesospheric Temperature and Ozone Sounding Based onSolar Occultation Data; .

The understanding of physical and chemical processesof the Earth atmosphere is of crucial importance todaily life and to future conditions of this planet.Observations of atmospheric parameters with highquality and long-term stability are essential forclimate system monitoring. This work develops anddemonstrates the performance of a realistic forwardmodel and retrieval algorithm for mesospheric temperature and ozone sounding employing the solaroccultation technique. The solar intensity in theultraviolet wavelength region is monitored by asatellite tracking the Sun in limb geometry duringoccultation by the Earth's atmosphere. A processingsystem is presented and used to calculate atmosphericprofiles from the solar radiation. This includes amathematical description of the measurement andretrieval. The author Christoph Rehrl presents anend-to-end retrieval performance analysis for thedeveloped retrieval processing system which was foundto produce data with high vertical resolution andaccuracy. This work provides a comprehensive insightin the present status as well as future developmentsin the field of solar occultations for probingatmosphere and climate.