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Series

2004

Posters

Density climatology

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physics

Rayleigh-Lidar Observations Of Mesospheric Mid-Latitude Density Climatology Above Utah State University, Eric M. Lundell, Vincent B. Wickwar Dec 2004

Rayleigh-Lidar Observations Of Mesospheric Mid-Latitude Density Climatology Above Utah State University, Eric M. Lundell, Vincent B. Wickwar

Posters

Data from Rayleigh lidars have been used extensively to derive temperatures in the mesospheric region of the atmosphere. However, these data have not been used extensively in a similar way to derive neutral densities. We report on one such mid-latitude, density climatology between 45 and ~90 km, based on nearly 600 good nights of observations carried out since 1993 at the Atmospheric Lidar Observatory (ALO) at Utah State University (41.7°N 111.8°W). They produce relative density profiles that are then normalized at 45 km to an empirical model, in this case the MSISe00 model. Despite this normalization, significant differences are found …


Mesospheric Mid-Latitude Density Climatology Above Utah State University, Eric M. Lundell, Vincent B. Wickwar Jun 2004

Mesospheric Mid-Latitude Density Climatology Above Utah State University, Eric M. Lundell, Vincent B. Wickwar

Posters

Lidars have been used extensively to derive temperatures, but not absolute densities, in the mesospheric region of the atmosphere. We used observations since 1993 with the Rayleigh- scatter lidar at the Atmospheric Lidar Observatory (ALO) at Utah State University (41.7oN, 111.8oW) to create an absolute density climatology between 45 and ~95 km. The observations provide profiles of relative density to which an absolute scale is attached by normalizing the profiles at 45 km to the densities in the MSISe00 empirical model. We examine the density variations on several time scales—during the climatological year, from year to year, and over several …