Measurement of the Spectral Thermal Emission of the Atmosphere from an Aircraft

The measurement of the atmospheric thermal emission is important for several reasons. Remote sensing working in the wavelength regions from λ = 3 μm to λ = 5 μm and from λ = 8 μm to λ = 14 μm, with high atmospheric transparency is hampered by absorption and thermal emission of the intervening atmosphere. Furthermore, both the global energy balance and the radiative heating loss of the outdoor surface of building envelopes crucially depend on atmospheric thermal emission |1|.