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Engineering

Selected Works

Alan Z Liu

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

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 Aug 2014

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 …

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Removing Milky Way From Airglow Images Using Principle Component Analysis, Zhenhua Li, Alan Z. Liu, Gulamabas G. Sivjee Feb 2014

Removing Milky Way From Airglow Images Using Principle Component Analysis, Zhenhua Li, Alan Z. Liu, Gulamabas G. Sivjee

Alan Z Liu

Airglow imaging is an effective way to obtain atmospheric gravity wave information in the airglow layers in the upper mesosphere and the lower thermosphere. Airglow images are often contaminated by the Milky Way emission. To extract gravity wave parameters correctly, the Milky Way must be removed. The paper demonstrates that principal component analysis (PCA) can effectively represent the dominant variation patterns of the intensity of airglow images that are associated with the slow moving Milky Way features. Subtracting this PCA reconstructed field reveals gravity waves that are otherwise overwhelmed by the strong spurious waves associated with the Milky Way. Numerical …

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A Model For Calculating Acoustic Gravity Wave Energy And Momentum Flux In The Mesosphere From Oh Airglow, Gary R. Swenson, Alan Z. Liu Sep 2013

A Model For Calculating Acoustic Gravity Wave Energy And Momentum Flux In The Mesosphere From Oh Airglow, Gary R. Swenson, Alan Z. Liu

Alan Z Liu

Acoustic gravity and tidal waves propagating in the mesosphere/lower thermosphere (80-110 km) perturb the airglow layer intensities. The OH airglow has recently been modeled to determine the relationship between the relative perturbed atmospheric density and temperature (ρ’/ ρ, T’/T) to the OH intensity ( I’OH/IOH ) at the OH emission altitudes [Swenson and Gardner, 1997]. A model is presented here which relates wave perturbed OH airglow to the wave energy and momentum flux as they propagate through the emission layer. The model is dependent on the wave horizontal and vertical wavelengths (or phase speed as related through the dispersion relationship), …

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