Atmospheric composition is a very important part of the climate system.
Highly relevant problems include ozone depletion, greenhouse gas warming and pollution through human industrial and agricultural activities. An important aspect of this research is to provide new observations of chemical compounds which are essential in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. This infra-red instrument potentially measures a large suite of chemical species and the possibility of mapping these compounds globally is an significant aspect of the project. The PhD work will bias towards organic compounds and related nitrogen species which are important in the UTLS region. Chemical balance is this region is complicated because of the influence of stratospheric ozone depletion, in situ chemistry, and tropospheric pollution events such as biomass burning.