American Geophysical Union Become an AGU Member
Subscribe to AGU Journals		 AGU Home AGU Publications

Subscriber Access to Full Article (Nonsubscribers may purchase for $9.00, Includes print PDF, file size: 11657726 bytes)

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 109, D02S02, doi:10.1029/2002JD003056, 2004

Unstable layers in the mesopause region observed with Na lidar during the Turbulent Oxygen Mixing Experiment (TOMEX) campaign

Alan Z. Liu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA


Raymond G. Roble

National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA


James H. Hecht

Space and Environmental Technology Center, The Aerospace Corporation, Los Angeles, California, USA


Miguel F. Larsen

Department of Physics, Clemson University, South Carolina, USA


Chester S. Gardner

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA


Abstract

The Na wind/temperature lidar located at Starfire Optical Range near Albuquerque, New Mexico, provided real time measurements of wind, temperature, and Na density in the mesopause region during the TOMEX rocket campaign in October 2000. The state of the atmosphere in which the rocket was launched into was examined using the lidar measurements. Both convectively and dynamically unstable layers were observed at various times and altitudes during the night. The low convective stability region below 90 km was found to be associated with the diurnal tide. The unstable layers are the combined results of wave and tidal perturbations. Comparison with the thermosphere/ionosphere/mesopshere/electrodynamics general circulation model (TIME-GCM) simulation showed that the model can produce the general feature of the observed atmospheric structure (but with a much smaller diurnal amplitude in temperature), which likely leads to underestimate of instability and gravity wave effects.

Received 18 October 2002; accepted 31 October 2003; published 17 January 2004.

Index Terms: 3332 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Mesospheric dynamics; 3360 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Remote sensing; 3379 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Turbulence; 3384 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Waves and tides.

Subscriber Access to Full Article (Nonsubscribers may purchase for $9.00, Includes print PDF, file size: 11657726 bytes)

Citation: Liu, A. Z., R. G. Roble, J. H. Hecht, M. F. Larsen, and C. S. Gardner (2004), Unstable layers in the mesopause region observed with Na lidar during the Turbulent Oxygen Mixing Experiment (TOMEX) campaign, J. Geophys. Res., 109, D02S02, doi:10.1029/2002JD003056.