Mesospheric and lower thermospheric winds, temperatures densities, and volume emission rates

• Main Author: Killeen, Timothy L.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 1994
• Subjects: GEOPHYSICS; Greenland; Yukon; Thule; Watson Lake
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19940020013

This memo has been written to report on the progress made under grant NAG1-1315 and to request a continuation of funding for this work. Our proposal involved a plan to utilize an existing ground-based chain of optical and radar facilities to assemble a comprehensive, long-term, multi-station base of upper-mesospheric and lower thermospheric measurements of neutral winds, temperatures, and volume emission rates that can be used to make comparisons with data from the HRDI and WINDII instruments that are flying aboard the UARS spacecraft. The ground-based, optical data were to be obtained on a routine basis from five geographically separated observatories at: Thule, Greenland; Sondrestrom, Greenland; Watson Lake, Yukon (replacing Calgary, Alberta); Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Maynooth, Eire. Several different optical instruments are present at these sites: the total array of instruments is comprised of five Fabry-Perot interferometers, two half meter Ebert-Fastie spectrometers, one all-sky CCD imager, and a near infra-red Michelson Fourier transform spectrometer. In addition to these optical instruments, data were to be obtained from the incoherent scatter radar at Sondrestrom, Greenland. These radar measurements are comprised of neutral winds, temperatures, and densities from altitudes between approximately 70 - 120 km. The optical measurements are obtained locally from specific altitudes depending on the emission line studied. For example, red line optical data come from about 220 km. In this report we summarize the progress made in obtaining these data and relate it to the specific tasks outlined in the original grant application. These tasks are discussed in the next section. Progress towards their completion is discussed in section three, while future plans and summary are described in section four.