Physics – Optics
Scientific paper
May 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agusmsa41d..02s&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2008, abstract #SA41D-02
Physics
Optics
0305 Aerosols And Particles (0345, 4801, 4906), 0319 Cloud Optics, 0320 Cloud Physics And Chemistry, 3334 Middle Atmosphere Dynamics (0341, 0342), 3389 Tides And Planetary Waves
Scientific paper
The variation of noctilucent cloud (NLC) frequency over the diurnal cycle is critical for reconciling the diverse sets of satellite cloud data that measure at discrete local times. The Spatial Heterodyne IMager for MEsospheric Radicals (SHIMMER) was launched in March, 2007 on the STPSat-1 satellite with the primary objective of observing solar resonance fluorescence of mesospheric hydroxyl (OH). SHIMMER observes the limb near 309 nm up to 58° latitude in the summer hemisphere and is therefore also able to detect scattered sunlight from the equatorward fringe of polar mesospheric clouds, where they are often more popularly called NLCs. SHIMMER has now collected a season of NLC observations from both the 2007 northern summer and the 2007- 2008 southern summer. It is in an orbit whereby the local time of its observations varies by about 30 minutes/day, allowing for the observation of NLCs throughout the diurnal cycle during the cloud season. Because the diurnal variation of the NLCs observed by SHIMMER is coupled to the seasonal variation, we remove the seasonal variation using satellite observations from a discrete local time. For this we use data from both the Solar Occultation For Ice Experiment (SOFIE) and the Optical Spectrograph and Infra-Red Imager System (OSIRIS). We find that for the northern summer, the diurnal variation of the NLC frequency varies by a factor of ten with two peaks near 0530 and 1800 local time and a minimum in between. We will compare these northern hemisphere results to new observations from the 2007-2008 southern summer and discuss the implications to analysis of long-term trends inferred using satellite data in either hemisphere.
Englert Christoph R.
Hervig Mark
Petelina S.
Stevens Michael Hugh
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