Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik

UP 1: Atmosphere - Trace Gases

UP 1.5: Vortrag

Dienstag, 8. März 2016, 12:00–12:15, H41

First retrievals of Na profiles in the mesopause region based on Na nightglow observations — •Christian von Savigny, Bianca Zilker, and Martin Langowski — Institut für Physik, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald, Felix-Hausdorff-Str. 6, 17489 Greifswald

The Na D lines are a well known feature of the terrestrial airglow and have been identified for the first time in 1929. During the daytime the Na airglow emission is caused by resonance fluorescence, while during the night the excitation occurs by chemiluminescent reactions. Knowledge of Na in the mesopause region is of interest, because the Na layer is thought to be maintained by meteoric ablation and Na measurements allow constraining the meteoric mass influx into the Earth system. In this contribution we employ SCIAMACHY/Envisat nighttime limb measurements of the Na D-line airglow from fall 2002 to spring 2012 - in combination with photochemical models - in order to retrieve Na concentration profiles in the 75 - 100 km altitude range. The Na profiles show realistic peak altitudes, number densities and seasonal variations. The retrieval scheme, sample results and comparisons to ground-based LIDAR measurements of Na as well as SCIAMACHY daytime retrievals will be presented. Moreover, uncertainties in the assumed photochemical scheme and their impact on the Na retrievals will be discussed.