Retrieval of Atmospheric CO2 Column from Ground-based Near IR Spectra of the Sun

This grant has supported a graduate research assistant stipend for Zhonghua Yang, a geochemistry Ph.D. student at Caltech. In this project, we have significantly improved the retrieval of atmospheric column CO2 (and molecular oxygen) from ground-based, high resolution near-IR solar transmission spectra. This work has greatly benefited from interactions with Dr. Geoffrey Toon and Stan Sander of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and with James T. Randerson, University of California - Irvine. The results from this study are summarized in three publications, reprints of which are enclosed in with this report.