Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Geodetic and Atmospheric Background
Johannes Böhm, David Salstein, Mahdi M. Alizadeh and Dudy D. Wijaya
Abstract
This first part in the topic on atmospheric effects in space geodesy provides
a review of the basic structure, composition, and workings of the atmosphere and
serves as a general background needed to help the reader understand the material in
later parts. Its large diversity of topics would usually not be included in one paper,
but since this work is designed as a textbook in a university geodesy course, we
intentionally discuss this broad variety of topics at the outset. The reader may wish
to skip this part and only revisit it as references and interest suggest. Here we cover
the following topics: After an overview of atmospheric effects in space geodesy, we
briefly review physical terminology and meteorological quantities. Then, we discuss
gas laws and atmospheric statics, and we introduce specific topics like reference
pressure, atmospheric tides, and the inverted barometer hypothesis, all of which
reappear in later parts. After an overview of atmospheric layers and circulation, we
concentrate on the ionosphere, highlighting ionization and recombination processes
and introducing the concept of Chapman layer profiles. Finally, we discuss height-
