On the reduction of occultation light curves

In the first two sections of this paper, the two basic methods of reducing occultation light curves—curve fitting and inversion—are reviewed and compared. It is shown that the curve fitting methods have severe problems of nonuniqueness. In addition, in the case of occultation curves dominated by spikes, it is not clear that such solutions are meaningful. The inversion method does not suffer from these drawbacks. Methods of deriving temperature profiles from refractivity profiles are dealt with in the third section. It is shown that, although the temperature profiles are sensitive to small errors in the refractivity profile, accurate temperatures can be obtained, particularly at the deeper levels of the atmosphere. The final section contains a brief discussion of the ambiguities that arise when the occultation curve straddles the turbopause.