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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 …