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A Comparative Analysis of the OI 130.4‐nm Emission Observed by NASA's TIMED Mission Using a Monte Carlo Radiative Transfer Model
Author(s) -
Qin Jianqi,
Harding Brian J.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1029/2019ja027520
Subject(s) - thermosphere , radiative transfer , physics , airglow , atmospheric radiative transfer codes , computational physics , solar zenith angle , radiance , monte carlo method , emission spectrum , atmospheric models , atmospheric sciences , zenith , ionosphere , atmosphere (unit) , meteorology , spectral line , astronomy , optics , statistics , mathematics
Remote sensing of the OI 130.4‐nm emission is potentially a useful means for routine monitoring of the atomic oxygen abundance in the upper atmosphere, especially for altitudes above ∼ 300 km where the OI 135.6‐nm emission becomes too dim to be useful. However, to date, the interpretation of the OI 130.4‐nm emission as a proxy for the O density remains ambiguous in that the relative contribution of the external and internal sources to the production of this emission has not been fully understood. In this study, we perform a comparative analysis of the OI 130.4‐nm dayglow observed by NASA's Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission using a Monte Carlo radiative transfer model to investigate the consistency between models and the TIMED/Global UltraViolet Imager (GUVI) data. The solar 130.4‐nm flux is measured by TIMED/Solar EUV Experiment (SEE). The Global Airglow (GLOW) and the Atmospheric Ultraviolet Radiance Integrated Code (AURIC) models are used to calculate the initial volume emission rates due to photoelectron impact excitation, and the NRLMSISE‐00 model is used to provide the atmospheric density and temperature profiles. Our data‐model comparisons suggest that the model predicted contributions from photoelectron impact excitation need to be scaled by a factor of ∼ 0.1–0.5 to achieve good fits with the data. Moreover, the modeled solar contributions need to be scaled up/down to fit the observations at small ( ∼ 20 )/large ( ∼ 60 ) solar zenith angles, with a factor of ∼ 0.5–1.7. These scale factors are larger than the uncertainties in the GUVI and SEE instrument calibrations, which might suggest inaccurate model predictions of the dayside O density and temperature variations with solar zenith angles.

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