Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorDunker, Tim
dc.date.accessioned2019-02-13T17:26:08Z
dc.date.available2019-02-13T17:26:08Z
dc.date.issued2018
dc.description.abstractI 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 taken between November 2010 and February 2014, when GRIPS 9 was in operation at the ALOMAR observatory (69.3° N, 16.0° 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 ±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 ∼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 unambiguously determine 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 ±16 K, on average. This is not a measurement uncertainty.en_US
dc.descriptionSource at <a href=https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6691-2018>https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6691-2018</a>en_US
dc.identifier.citationDunker T. (2018) The airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidars. <i> Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 18 </i> (9), 6691-6697. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6691-2018en_US
dc.identifier.doi10.5194/acp-18-6691-2018
dc.identifier.issn1680-7316
dc.identifier.issn1680-7324
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10037/14690
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherEuropean Geosciences Union (EGU)en_US
dc.relation.journalAtmospheric Chemistry and Physics
dc.relation.projectIDNorges forskningsråd: 216870en_US
dc.relation.projectIDNorges forskningsråd: 208020en_US
dc.rights.accessRightsopenAccessen_US
dc.subjectVDP::Matematikk og naturvitenskap: 400::Fysikk: 430en_US
dc.subjectVDP::Mathematics and natural scienses: 400::Physics: 430en_US
dc.titleThe airglow layer emission altitude cannot be determined unambiguously from temperature comparison with lidarsen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.typePeer revieweden_US
dc.typeTidsskriftartikkel


File(s) in this item

Thumbnail

This item appears in the following collection(s)

Show simple item record