A modified version of the differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) method is presented. The technique is called orthogonal optical absorption spectroscopy (OOAS). A widespread variant of DOAS with smoothing of the registered spectrum and absorption cross sections being made employing a polynomial regression is a particular case of OOAS. The concept of OOAS provides a variety of new possibilities for constructing computational schemes and analyzing the influence of different error sources on calculated concentrations.