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Mesospheric temperatures estimated from the meteor radar observations at Mohe, China
Author(s) -
Liu Libo,
Liu Huixin,
Le Huijun,
Chen Yiding,
Sun YangYi,
Ning Baiqi,
Hu Lianhuan,
Wan Weixing,
Li Na,
Xiong Jiangang
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1002/2016ja023776
Subject(s) - meteor (satellite) , thermosphere , full width at half maximum , depth sounding , mesosphere , airglow , solstice , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , meteorology , latitude , geology , ionosphere , physics , geodesy , optics , stratosphere , geophysics , oceanography
Abstract In this work, we report the estimation of mesospheric temperatures at 90 km height from the observations of the VHF all‐sky meteor radar operated at Mohe (53.5°N, 122.3°E), China, since August 2011. The kinetic temperature profiles retrieved from the observations of Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) on board the Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics, and Dynamics satellite are processed to provide the temperature ( T SABER ) and temperature gradient (d T /d h ) at 90 km height. Based on the SABER temperature profile data an empirical d T /d h model is developed for the Mohe latitude. First, we derive the temperatures from the meteor decay times ( T meteor ) and the Mohe d T /d h model gives prior information of temperature gradients. Second, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the meteor height profiles is calculated and further used to deduce the temperatures ( T FWHM ) based on the strong linear relationship between FWHM and T SABER . The temperatures at 90 km deduced from the decay times ( T meteor ) and from the meteor height distributions ( T FWHM ) at Mohe are validated/calibrated with T SABER . The temperatures present a considerable annual variation, being maximum in winter and minimum in summer. Harmonic analyses reveal that the temperatures have an annual variation consistent with T SABER . Our work suggests that FWHM has a good performance in routine estimation of the temperatures. It should be pointed out that the slope of FWHM as a function of T SABER is 10.1 at Mohe, which is different from that of 15.71 at King Sejong (62.2°S, 58.8°E) station.