Review of Key Findings From Lidar Observations of Polar Mesospheric Clouds

Details Review of Key Findings From Lidar Observations of Polar Mesospheric Clouds Review of Key Findings From Lidar Observations of Polar Mesospheric Clouds

May 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agusmsa52a..02c&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #SA52A-02

Physics

0320 Cloud Physics And Chemistry, 0340 Middle Atmosphere: Composition And Chemistry, 0394 Instruments And Techniques, 3305 Climate Change And Variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513), 3360 Remote Sensing

Scientific paper

Advancement of lidar technology enabled the observations of polar mesospheric clouds (PMC) through full diurnal cycle in both northern and southern hemispheres over the last two decades. In particular, the extensive observations made with Rayleigh lidars and potassium Doppler lidars in the Arctic region provided the morphology of northern PMC, and the extensive observations made with an iron Boltzmann temperature lidar and a Rayleigh lidar in the Antarctic region exhibited the climatology of southern PMC. These lidar observations revealed important PMC properties and significantly improved our understanding of PMC physics, climatology, and relationship to atmospheric conditions. Both similarities and differences of PMC were found between the northern and southern hemispheres, especially the lidar observed inter-hemispheric difference in PMC mean altitude triggered a debate of inter-hemispheric differences in the middle and upper atmosphere. In this paper, we summarize the key findings from lidar PMC data obtained in the Arctic and Antarctic regions and make comparisons of PMC properties in both hemispheres. Several key lidar findings are that southern hemispheric PMC altitudes are on average 1 km higher than corresponding northern hemispheric PMC and higher PMC occur at higher latitude. The distribution of PMC centroid altitudes over all observations is symmetric (nearly Gaussian) in both hemispheres with the most probable altitude near the center of the distribution (~85 km for South Pole, ~84 km for Rothera, and ~83 km in the Arctic). Significant results also include the dependence of PMC brightness on their altitudes, and the diurnal, seasonal and interannual variations of PMC altitude and brightness. Measurements of PMC particle size and number density using multi-color and polarization detections are presented to show the progresses in recent years. We hope that this paper provides a comprehensive review of current status of lidar observations of PMC and discusses potential future directions of PMC study, especially when combining groundbased or airborne lidar observations with the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite mission.

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