Mesospheric Research Based on the Analysis of Temperatures and Densities from the Utah State University/Center for Atmospheric and Space Sciences Atmospheric Lidar Observatory

Utah State University, Logan UT

Investigators

Abstract

Eleven years of Rayleigh lidar data are analyzed to reveal cyclic and long-term behavior of mesospheric temperature at the Atmospheric Lidar Observatory (ALO) at Utah State University. The temperature climatology is compared with results from other lidars (in particular the lidar at Colorado State University), from satellites (including HALOE and SABER data), from imagers using OH rotational temperature derivations, and from empirical models (MSIS-90 and CIRA86). Climatology of gravity wave Brunt-Vaisala frequencies and potential energies are also developed using the extant data, and a search is made to determine if meteorological variations appear in the lidar data after propagation from the troposphere to the mesosphere.