Our research activities mainly focus on the sounding of Earth’s atmospheric composition from satellites. They are mainly connected to the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) instruments onboard the MetOp platforms. The main part of our research activities are related to the retrieval of concentration distributions of reactive trace gases and aerosols from IASI measurements. Applications range from global pollution monitoring (identification and quantification of sources and transport) and the assessment of environmental impacts, to the study of local plume chemistry. They also include several operational aspects, e.g. in air quality forecasting and volcanic surveillance. A smaller part of our activities focuses on recent climate change, through the analysis of changes in IASI spectral radiances.

Pierre Coheur, Lieven Clarisse