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Frank, you wrote
> I think you'll find that the US Standard  Atmosphere is mostly relevant to
> very high altitude issues like  supersonic/hypersonic flight and
> spacecraft
> re-entries (and in fact if you  search for this title on google image
> search
> you'll discover photos of its cover  art which shows a satellite orbiting
> the
> Earth). For refraction near the  horizon, you need details on the lower
> troposphere
> which is really a weather  issue. And as such you can find data on it from
> weather resources.

It is correct that it is difficult to read out of the graph the values for
the lower part of the atmosphere. That is one reason for looking for
tabulated values; in addition, I also did hope that the tabulated values
would cover this part more detailed than the graph. The reason why I am
aiming for theses temperature profiles is because they show average values
for different geographical latitudes and for different seasons (summer and
winter). In addition they are still more detailed in the lower atmosphere
than the "general" standard lapse rate of -6.5degK/km. If averaged balloon
data would be available in a simmilar way (different latitudes and seasons),
the US Standard Atmosphere data could be complemented with them.

My thoughts are going in the following direction: The program I am working
on requires the calculation of refraction for any location on the globe and
for heights up to 11000m, i.e. for altitudes from -3deg to 90deg. A possible
way of doing this could be by calculating refraction tables (e.g. with the
data from the U.S. Standard Atmosphere) for different latitudes and
different seasons and interpolate the resulting refraction value for a
certain altitude from those tables, depending the location's latitude and
the day within the seasons.

Marcel

   

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