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Full-Text Articles in Earth Sciences
Measuring Eddy Heat And Constituent Fluxes With High-Resolution Na And Fe Doppler Lidars, Chester S. Gardner, Alan Z. Liu
Measuring Eddy Heat And Constituent Fluxes With High-Resolution Na And Fe Doppler Lidars, Chester S. Gardner, Alan Z. Liu
Alan Z Liu
Vertical transport by turbulent mixing plays a fundamental role in establishing the thermal and
constituent structure of the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT). Because of observational
challenges, eddy heat, constituent, and momentum fluxes, and the associated coefficients for thermal (kH),
constituent (kzz), and momentum (kM), diffusion have not been well characterized in the MLT. We show that
properly configured Na and Fe Doppler lidars, with sufficient resolution to observe the turbulence-induced wind,
temperature, and density fluctuations, can make direct measurements of eddy …
Inferring The Global Cosmic Dust Influx To The Earth’S Atmosphere From Lidar Observations Of The Vertical Flux Of Mesospheric Na, Chester S. Gardner, Alan Z. Liu, Dan Marsh, Wuhu Feng, John Plane
Inferring The Global Cosmic Dust Influx To The Earth’S Atmosphere From Lidar Observations Of The Vertical Flux Of Mesospheric Na, Chester S. Gardner, Alan Z. Liu, Dan Marsh, Wuhu Feng, John Plane
Alan Z Liu
Estimates of the global influx of cosmic dust are highly uncertain, ranging from 0.4–110 t/d. All
meteoric debris that enters the Earth’s atmosphere is eventually transported to the surface. The downward
fluxes of meteoric metals like mesospheric Na and Fe, in the region below where they are vaporized and
where the majority of these species are still in atomic form, are equal to their meteoric ablation influxes,
which in turn, are proportional to the total cosmic dust influx. Doppler lidar measurements of mesospheric Na
fluxes made throughout the …