Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsa51b1933v&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SA51B-1933
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
[0310] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Airglow And Aurora, [0340] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Middle Atmosphere: Composition And Chemistry
Scientific paper
TThe Meinel band emission lines from rovibrationally excited OH in its electronic ground state in the nightglow are widely used as a diagnostic tool to investigate key mesospheric variables such as temperature, tides, and gravity waves. The OH rotational temperature has been extensively studied to ascertain both long- and short-term variability in the upper atmosphere. Current controversy in the literature regarding the possible variability of temperatures deduced from different OH rovibrational levels limits our ability to compare data from different sources. Researchers tend to use a monitoring vibrational level for OH Meinel bands that is most convenient for their instrument. Background sky spectra captured by astronomical instruments provide detailed records of optical emissions in the upper atmosphere. For this study we utilized existing sky spectra from the Keck telescopes in Mauna Kea and the Very Large Telescope in Chile for the OH Meinel bands bound by the extremes (υ = 3, 8). We compared these results with the temperatures deduced from the O2 0-1 Atmospheric band at 865 nm. This latter emission, emanating from a long-lived species, should represent the true kinetic temperature at the altitude of emission and therefore puts a cap on how high the temperature difference can be between the nominal OH altitude (87 km) and the 95-km altitude of the O2 emission. We present the results of our analysis and discuss the implications for mesospheric temperature retrievals from OH emissions. This work was supported by NSF grant ATM-0924781 from NSF CEDAR.
Slanger Tom G.
Vimal D. V.
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