Atmospheric transmission spectroscopy using the sun as the source.

A method is presented to obtain normalized high resolution slant path transmittance spectra of the atmosphere. Sample spectra are presented. The spectra are of use in remote sensing applications for various types of atmospheric physics and atmospheric photochemistry research, for validating line parameter compilations, and for modeling slant path radiative transfer. The sample spectra are used to demonstrate improved accuracy of line-by-line transmission models when recently reported water vapor line parameters are substituted for those in the 1986 AFGL line parameter compilation in the region near 1 microm.