General Aviation Aircraft Design

Appendix A

Atmospheric Modeling

A.1 Introduction

A number of organizations and scientists have developed sophisticated models of the atmosphere that allow atmospheric properties at different altitudes to be determined. As an example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has developed one of the best known of these, the U.S. Standard Atmosphere 1976 [1]. However, far more sophisticated models than that have been developed. One such model is the NRLMSISE-00 (Naval Research Laboratory Mass Spectrometer and Incoherent Scatter, where E means from surface of the Earth to the Exosphere). This model requests input data in the form of year, day, time of day, altitude, geodetic latitude and longitude, and many others. It returns information ...