Measurements of mesospheric O3 and H2O using ground-based millimeterwave radiometry in the high Arctic

• Main Authors: Mathias Palm, C. G. Hoffmann, S. H. W. Golchert, J. Notholt, G. Hochschild
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.621.5848; http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/ram/pdf_poster/EGU2009-Mathias-Poster_CAWSES-v2.pdf

The mesosphere is of major interest for modelling and measuring in the SCOSTEP project. The work presented here deals with measuring mesospheric O3 and H2O above the Arctic (78.3◦N latitude) us-ing ground-based millimetre wave radiometry. Data from one out of three measuring periods since 2006 are presented and first results are shown. The method yields O3 and H2O profiles up to 65 km with moderate altitude resolution (about 15 km FWHM). Information is sensed up to the mesopause region (ca 85 km altitude). The presented O3 data remarkably well match our in-house chemical transport model (CTM), espe-cially in light of the mesospheric chemistry being described in terms of families of species. Yet the data also indicate how this approach breaks down in the mesosphere. The WaRAM measurements hint a diurnal cycle of in mesospheric H2O which is not supported by current modelling. However, the data are limited, hence final conclusions can not be drawn from them so far. 1.