Atmospheric Radiation
MIT OpenCourseWare's graduate course on the physics behind atmospheric radiation and remote sensing. Topics include the radiative transfer equation with emission and scattering, spectroscopy, Mie theory for particle scattering, and numerical methods for solving these equations. The course also covers inverse problems, showing how satellite and ground instruments infer atmospheric temperature and composition from radiation measurements, with computer codes used to work through the numerical solutions. Materials include lecture notes, problem sets, and readings drawn from MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences curriculum. The course assumes prior physics and math background and is aimed at students who want the mathematical machinery behind remote sensing instruments rather than a conceptual overview. As with all MIT OpenCourseWare offerings, materials are free to access and there is no certificate.