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Measurements of superadiabatic lapse rates in the middle atmosphere
Author(s) -
Sica R. J.,
Thorsley M. D.
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 - 10.1029/96gl02642
Subject(s) - atmosphere (unit) , stratosphere , mesosphere , rayleigh scattering , instability , lapse rate , lidar , convective instability , geology , convection , atmospheric sciences , geophysics , environmental science , computational physics , optics , physics , meteorology , remote sensing , mechanics
A large power‐aperture product Rayleigh‐scatter lidar system has been successfully built and over 175 nights of middle atmosphere temperature measurements have been obtained. The high signal‐to‐noise ratio of these measurements allows the stability of the air in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere to be determined. A detailed methodology has been developed to attempt to differentiate between lapse rate variations due to photon counting errors and actual geophysical variations. On nights when the geophysical variations are large compared to the photon counting errors, regions of convective stability and instability can be determined at a reasonably high confidence level. Both statistics of the layers and an “image” of the layers is presented for the night of May 31, 1996. The measured percentage of unstable layers is in agreement with the predictions of Hines (1991), as is the apparently sporadic formation and distribution of the unstable regions.