Observations and Modeling of the Upper Mesosphere: Mesopause Characteristics, Inversion Layers, and Bores

Space Imagery Enhancement Investigations; Software for Processing Middle Atmosphere Data

“…Using an early version of SABER retrieved temperature, we studied global characteristics of the mesopause (temperature, altitude) at solstice [7]. This confirmed and refined the then-evolving notion of a global two-level mesopause, e.g.…”

“…The overall process we engage in involves (1) downloading or otherwise obtaining files containing SABER data that have been processed into physical units by the operations team; (2) producing event data files and storing them in a certain file structure; and (3) accessing those data in ways that allow us to address science questions. Results obtained from the last of these steps have been reported in our Interim Scientific Reports [7,8,9,10,11] and in a research paper [12].…”

“…In fact, in this regime temperature inversion layers (TILs) are quite common in the mesosphere, particularly in regions and at local times with strong tidal influence. We showed that TILs affect the mesopause characteristics, and characterized their occurrence distributions in latitude and local time [7].…”

“…We also studied the properties of mesospheric bores [7], by numerically solving the differential equations governing their propagation modes. Using impulsive forcing with measured wind and temperature profiles, we determined the vertical displacement for altitudes within the duct as a function of time and horizontal distance, and thus the evolution of the wave.…”

Anomalous Conditions in the Middle Atmosphere During Boreal Winters of 2004 and 2006

“…Such layers were observed frequently in the airglow by the WINDII instrument aboard UARS [Melo el al, 2000] and are also common in SABER data. Having done much work on large temperature inversion layers (TILs) [Winick et al, 2004;Wintersteiner and Cohen, 2005], we sought to verify the suggestion that TILs could be responsible for OH double layers. We searched more than a year's worth of SABER events from the entire globe, separating data according to season, latitude, and local time (LT).…”