Fourier transform spectrometry has played an important role in the three-dimensional greenhouse gas monitoring as the focus of attention on global warming in the past few years. In this paper, a ground-based low-resolution remote sensing system measuring the total columns of CO2 and CH4 is developed, which tracks the sun automatically and records the spectra in real-time and has the advantages of portability and low cost. A spectral inversion algorithm based on nonlinear least squares spectral fitting procedure for determining the column concentrations of these species is described. Atmospheric transmittance spectra are computed line-by-line in the forward model and observed on-line by direct solar radiation. Also, the wavelength shifts are introduced and the influence of spectral resolution is discussed. Based on this system and algorithm, the vertical columns of O2, CO2, and CH4 are calculated from total atmospheric observation transmittance spectra in Hefei, and the results show that the column averaged dry-air mole fractions of CO2 and CH4 are measured with accuracies of 3.7% and 5%, respectively. Finally, the H2O columns are compared with the results observed by solar radiometer at the same site and the calculated correlation coefficient is 0.92, which proves that this system is suitable for field campaigns and used to monitor the local greenhouse gas sources under the condition of higher accuracy, indirectly.
