ATMOSPHERIC CONSTITUENT INVERSION PROBLEMS - IMPLICATIONS FOR BASE-LINE MONITORING

The importance of ill-posed inverse problems in atmospheric chemistry is reviewed. Most models for the determination of sources and sinks of atmospheric constitutents lead to such ill-posed inverse problems. Consequently, source determinations may be subject to severe amplification of observational error, particularly in the most rapidly varying components. Therefore, mathematical analysis of the various inverse problems needs to be undertaken in order to determine the extent to which a given set of data contains usable information about source/sink processes. © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.