Introduction: Overview of solar and terrestrial radiation: Structure and properties of the radiation spectrum. Radiometric quantities. Lambert’s law. Emission of radiation – Kirchhoff’s law. Propagation of radiation through the atmosphere - theoretical approach through the radiation transfer laws. Absorption: Interactions of solar radiation with the atmospheric constituents with emphasis on its absorption. Overview of molecular absorption spectra of atmospheric gases. Broadening of absorption and emission lines. Absorption of solar radiation. Atmospheric heating and cooling. Scattering: Interactions of solar radiation with the atmospheric constituents with emphasis on its scattering. Theoretical approach of scattering: Polarization, Rayleigh and Mie scattering. Transfer of solar radiation through the atmosphere including scattering processes. Scattering effects in the atmosphere – Umkehr effect - Reflection of radiation on different surfaces. Atmospheric effects from interaction of absorption and scattering. Applications: Langley extrapolation – measurements of aerosol optical depth and atmospheric columns of gases – measurement of the extraterrestrial spectrum form ground based measurements. Differential optical absorption spectroscopy. Transfer of terrestrial radiation through the atmosphere. Emission of infrared radiation form the surface and the atmosphere. Satellite remote sensing in the infrared – weighting functions. Applications. Measurements of solar radiation from the ground. Overview of instrumentation – calibration. Quality control of radiation measurements. Standardization of spectral measurements. Introduction to modeling of solar radiation transfer. Practical modeling exercises with simple radiative transfer problems.