Iteratively Regularized Gauss--Newton Method for Atmospheric Remote Sensing

Abstract

In this paper we present an inversion algorithm for nonlinear ill--posed problems arising in atmospheric remote sensing. The proposed method is the iteratively regularized Gauss--Newton method. The dependence of the performance and behaviour of the algorithm on the choice of the regularization matrices and sequences of regularization parameters is studied by means of simulations. A method for improving the accuracy of the solution when the identity matrix is used as regularization matrix is also discussed. Results are presented for atmospheric temperature retrievals from a far infrared spectrum observed by an airborne uplooking heterodyne instrument.