Detection of nitric acid and nitric oxides in the terrestrial atmosphere in the middle-infrared spectral region

Abstract. A proposal for combined space and ground-based observations of the vertical 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 measurements: geometrical considerations, simulations of the solar absorption spectra in the middle-infrared region corresponding to the different observational geometries, and the associated retrieval methods. These studies are done specifically for the Belgian-French experiment MIRAS (MIR Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer) onboard the Russian Space Station MIR and correlative ground-based FTIR measurements in the Tatra mountains.