The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars
I investigate the nightly mean emission height and width of the OH*(3-1) layer by comparing nightly mean temperatures measured by the ground-based spectrometer GRIPS 9 and the Na lidar at ALOMAR. The data set contains 42 coincident measurements between November 2010 and February 2014, when GRIPS 9 w...
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ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.1710.08461 2023-05-15T17:43:35+02:00 The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars Dunker, Tim 2017 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1710.08461 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08461 unknown arXiv https://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6691-2018 arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences article-journal Article ScholarlyArticle Text 2017 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1710.08461 https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6691-2018 2022-04-01T10:28:58Z I investigate the nightly mean emission height and width of the OH*(3-1) layer by comparing nightly mean temperatures measured by the ground-based spectrometer GRIPS 9 and the Na lidar at ALOMAR. The data set contains 42 coincident measurements between November 2010 and February 2014, when GRIPS 9 was in operation at the ALOMAR observatory (69.3$^\circ$N, 16.0$^\circ$E) in northern Norway. To closely resemble the mean temperature measured by GRIPS 9, I weight each nightly mean temperature profile measured by the lidar using Gaussian distributions with 40 different centre altitudes and 40 different full widths at half maximum. In principle, one can thus determine the altitude and width of an airglow layer by finding the minimum temperature difference between the two instruments. On most nights, several combinations of centre altitude and width yield a temperature difference of $\pm$2 K. The generally assumed altitude of 87 km and width of 8 km is never an unambiguous, good solution for any of the measurements. Even for a fixed width of $\sim$8.4 km, one can sometimes find several centre altitudes that yield equally good temperature agreement. Weighted temperatures measured by lidar are not suitable to determine unambiguously the emission height and width of an airglow layer. However, when actual altitude and width data are lacking, a comparison with lidars can provide an estimate of how representative a measured rotational temperature is of an assumed altitude and width. I found the rotational temperature to represent the temperature at the commonly assumed altitude of 87.4 km and width of 8.4 km to within $\pm$16 K, on average. This is not a measurement uncertainty. : Version published in Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14 May 2018 Text Northern Norway DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Alomar ENVELOPE(-67.083,-67.083,-68.133,-68.133) Norway |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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topic |
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences |
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Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences Dunker, Tim The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars |
topic_facet |
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences |
description |
I investigate the nightly mean emission height and width of the OH*(3-1) layer by comparing nightly mean temperatures measured by the ground-based spectrometer GRIPS 9 and the Na lidar at ALOMAR. The data set contains 42 coincident measurements between November 2010 and February 2014, when GRIPS 9 was in operation at the ALOMAR observatory (69.3$^\circ$N, 16.0$^\circ$E) in northern Norway. To closely resemble the mean temperature measured by GRIPS 9, I weight each nightly mean temperature profile measured by the lidar using Gaussian distributions with 40 different centre altitudes and 40 different full widths at half maximum. In principle, one can thus determine the altitude and width of an airglow layer by finding the minimum temperature difference between the two instruments. On most nights, several combinations of centre altitude and width yield a temperature difference of $\pm$2 K. The generally assumed altitude of 87 km and width of 8 km is never an unambiguous, good solution for any of the measurements. Even for a fixed width of $\sim$8.4 km, one can sometimes find several centre altitudes that yield equally good temperature agreement. Weighted temperatures measured by lidar are not suitable to determine unambiguously the emission height and width of an airglow layer. However, when actual altitude and width data are lacking, a comparison with lidars can provide an estimate of how representative a measured rotational temperature is of an assumed altitude and width. I found the rotational temperature to represent the temperature at the commonly assumed altitude of 87.4 km and width of 8.4 km to within $\pm$16 K, on average. This is not a measurement uncertainty. : Version published in Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14 May 2018 |
format |
Text |
author |
Dunker, Tim |
author_facet |
Dunker, Tim |
author_sort |
Dunker, Tim |
title |
The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars |
title_short |
The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars |
title_full |
The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars |
title_fullStr |
The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars |
title_full_unstemmed |
The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars |
title_sort |
airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars |
publisher |
arXiv |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1710.08461 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08461 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-67.083,-67.083,-68.133,-68.133) |
geographic |
Alomar Norway |
geographic_facet |
Alomar Norway |
genre |
Northern Norway |
genre_facet |
Northern Norway |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6691-2018 |
op_rights |
arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1710.08461 https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6691-2018 |
_version_ |
1766145707085922304 |