| Abstract: | The second objective of GARP—climate research—comes more and more into the focus of the scientific community, and the use of satellites and spacelabs to acquire the necessary data is discussed widely. From an inspection of the results of current climate model computations it is attempted in this paper to deduce the criticality of atmospheric parameters with respect to climate and to deduce the required measuring accuracy to get useful data for further climate studies. It emerges that some quantities as the solar flux and albedo have to be determined to better than 1%, and that much improved global information about particles, clouds and gas distribution is necessary. The impact of these requirements on future satellite systems is discussed. One result is the need for comparative and calibrating spacelab missions as well as for adequate ground truth or in situ operations. |
