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High-resolution measurements from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) radio occultation (RO) provide atmospheric profiles with independent information on altitude and pressure. This unique property is of crucial advantage when analyzing atmospheric characteristics that require joint knowledge of altitude and pressure or other thermodynamic atmospheric variables. Here we introduce and demonstrate the utility of this independent information from RO and discuss the computation, uncertainty, and use of RO atmospheric profiles on isohypsic coordinates-mean sea level altitude and geopotential height-as well as on thermodynamic coordinates (pressure and potential temperature). Using geopotential height as vertical grid, we give information on errors of RO-derived temperature, pressure, and potential temperature profiles and provide an empirical error model which accounts for seasonal and latitudinal variations. The observational uncertainty of individual temperature/pressure/potential temperature profiles is about 0.7 K/0.15%/1.4 K in the tropopause region. It gradually increases into the stratosphere and decreases toward the lower troposphere. This decrease is due to the increasing influence of background information. The total climatological error of mean atmospheric fields is, in general, dominated by the systematic error component. We use sampling error-corrected climatological fields to demonstrate the power of having different and accurate vertical coordinates available. As examples we analyze characteristics of the location of the tropopause for geopotential height, pressure, and potential temperature coordinates as well as seasonal variations of the midlatitude jet stream core. This highlights the broad applicability of RO and the utility of its versatile vertical geolocation for investigating the vertical structure of the troposphere and stratosphere.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) provides sensitive detections of neutral gas and ambient ion composition. NGIMS measurements of nine atomic and molecular neutral species, and their variation with altitude, latitude, and solar zenith angle are reported over several months of operation of the MAVEN mission. Sampling NGIMS signals from multiple neutral species every several seconds reveals persistent and unexpectedly large amplitude density structures. The scale height temperatures are mapped over the course of the first few months of the mission from high down to midlatitudes. NGIMS measurements near the homopause of 40 Ar/N 2 ratios agree with those reported by the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation and allow the altitude of the homopause for the most abundant gases to be established.

Infrared transmission and emission spectroscopy of exoplanets, recorded from primary transit and secondary eclipse measurements, indicate the presence of the most abundant carbon and oxygen molecular species (H2O, CH4, CO and CO2) in a few exoplanets. However, efforts to constrain the molecular abundances to within several orders of magnitude are thwarted by the broad range of degenerate solutions that fit the data. Here, we explore, with radiative transfer models and analytical approximations, the nature of the degenerate solution sets resulting from the sparse measurements of 'hot Jupiter' exoplanets. As demonstrated with simple analytical expressions, primary transit measurements probe roughly four atmospheric scale heights at each wavelength band. Derived mixing ratios from these data are highly sensitive to errors in the radius of the planet at a reference pressure. For example, an uncertainty of 1% in the radius of a 1000 K and H2-based exoplanet with Jupiter's radius and mass causes an uncertainty of a factor of approximately 100-10,000 in the derived gas mixing ratios. The degree of sensitivity depends on how the line strength increases with the optical depth (i.e. the curve of growth) and the atmospheric scale height. Temperature degeneracies in the solutions of the primary transit data, which manifest their effects through the scale height and absorption coefficients, are smaller. We argue that these challenges can be partially surmounted by a combination of selected wavelength sampling of optical and infrared measurements and, when possible, the joint analysis of transit and secondary eclipse data of exoplanets. However, additional work is needed to constrain other effects, such as those owing to planetary clouds and star spots. Given the current range of open questions in the field, both observations and theory, there is a need for detailed measurements with space-based large mirror platforms (e.g. James web space telescope) and smaller broad survey telescopes as well as ground-based efforts.