Research on atmospheric radiation enjoys a special place in the atmospheric sciences being firmly rooted both in fundamental research on the atmosphere and in the development of new observational tools to study the atmosphere. Atmospheric radiation is also at the foundation of a number of key observational programs and the coming years will witness exciting new areas of research stimulated by programs such as NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) which is to be launched in 1997 and with the impending launch of EOS platforms [e.g. Wielicki et al., 1994] and the continuation of the U.S. Department of Energy's ARM [ Stokes and Schwartz, 1994]. Under the auspices of ARM, the DOE is supporting the development of radiation payloads for unmanned aircraft and at the time of writing this article have conducted 8 research flights gathering impressive radiative flux profile data such as the broadband infrared fluxes shown in Fig. 1. With the development of a high altitude capability both as part of this Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle (UAV) activity and with the emergence of other high altitude research aircraft, the future of radiation research promises to be an exciting one.
Acknowledgments. Portions of this review were supported under NSF Grant ATM--9100795 and NASA Grant NAG8-981.