Advanced development of remote sensing FTIR in air environment monitoring

Remote sensing FTIR(RS-FTIR) is one of the most important technologies in atmospheric pollutant monitoring. It has several prevailing advantages: (1) high resolution and high selectivity; (2) it requiring no sampling and no sample preprocessing; (3) capability of detecting several compounds simultaneously; (4) real time, long distance, and automatic monitoring. So it is extraordinarily appropriate for the quantitative and qualitative determination, and remote, real time, dynamic monitoring of air contaminant, especially the toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The present paper reviews the research progress in remote sensing FTIR for air monitoring made by the Laboratory of Advanced Spectroscopy in recent years, including chemometrics, computed tomography, FTIR spectra interpretation, spatial distribution of air pollutant concentration and passive remote monitoring, etc. These research findings show that the rapid development and application of remote sensing FTIR accelerated the temporal and spatial extension of analytical chemistry, and it will by all means have wide prospects in atmospheric environmental monitoring.