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Mesopause temperature profiling by potassium lidar
Author(s) -
von Zahn Ulf,
Höffner Josef
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/95gl03688
Subject(s) - mesopause , lidar , laser , wavelength , materials science , environmental science , saturation (graph theory) , remote sensing , atmospheric sciences , mesosphere , optics , geology , physics , stratosphere , optoelectronics , mathematics , combinatorics
We report on initial measurements of potassium density and temperature profiles of the mesopause region by a containerized and hence transportable lidar instrument. The centerpiece of this lidar is a new, all‐solid‐state laser system. We employed a cw seeded and pulsed alexandrite ring laser working at the 770 nm wavelength of the K(D 1 ) finestructure line. We show that, different from the Na case, in K soundings the effects of a minor isotope have to be taken into account in the data analysis. We point out that we observe on average considerably smaller K column densities than those published in the late 1970s by a French group. We study quantitatively the influence of the Hanle and potential saturation effects on the derived temperatures. We give an example of a mesopause temperature profile taken with our transportable K lidar.