München 2019 – scientific programme
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UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik
UP 8: Physics of the middle atmosphere
UP 8.2: Talk
Thursday, March 21, 2019, 11:20–11:40, HS 22
Upper mesospheric Sodium profiles from OSIRIS nightglow measurements — •Julia Koch1, Landon Rieger2, Adam Bourassa2, Doug Degenstein2, and Christian von Savigny1 — 1University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany — 2University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of the mechanism of the Na-D-line excitation in the terrestrial nightglow. To do so a good approach is to find out more about the Na-density profile around the globe. OSIRIS (the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imager System) on the satellite Odin provides limb measurements from February 2001 and is still operational today. Sodium emits radiation at 589,0 and 589,6 nm which is covered by the OSIRIS spectral range. Although its resolution is not good enough to separate the two lines OSIRIS has a better signal-to-noise ratio than other instruments. We implemented an inversion method to retrieve upper mesospheric Na profiles from OSIRIS nightglow measurements based on an effective Chapman excitation scheme. To validate the obtained results they were also compared to sodium profiles that were previously retrieved from SCHIAMACHY data. And it can be shown that both instruments provided results that are in good agreement with each other.