Night OH In The Mesosphere Of Venus and Earth: A Comparative Planetology Perspective

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Satellite measurements of the terrestrial nightside mesosphere from the MLS/Aura MLS instrument show a layer of OH near 82 km. This layer confirms earlier measurements by ground-based UVFTS. The MLS and UVFTS observations measure OH in the lowest vibrational state and are distinct, but related chemically, from vibrationally-excited emission from the OH Meinel bands in the near infrared. The Caltech 1-D KINETICS model has been extended to include vibrational dependence of OH reactions and shows good agreement with MLS OH data and with observations of the Meinel bands. The model shows a chemical lifetime of HOx that increases from less than a day at 80 km to over a month at 87 km. Above this altitude transport processes become an important part of HOx chemistry. The model predicts that ground state OH represents 99% of the total OH up to 84 km.
Similarly, Venus airglow emissions detected at wave-lengths of 1.40-1.49 and 2.6-3.14 μm in limb obser-vations by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on the Venus Express space-craft are attributed to the OH (2-0) and (1-0) Meinel band transitions as well. The integrated emission rates for the OH (2-0) and (1-0) bands were measured to be 100±40 and 880±90 kR respectively, both peaking at an altitude of 96±2 km near midnight local time for the considered orbit. We use the same Caltech 1-D KINETICS model to model these observations for Venus as was used for the Earth and discuss the conclusions from a comparative planetology perspective, highlighting the similarities and differences between Venus and Earth.

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