HR: 08:20h
AN: SA31A-02 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Investigation of solar cycle effect and temperature trends in the mid-latitude mesopause region
AU: * She, C
EM: joeshe@lamar.colostate.edu
AF: Colorado State University, 200 West Lake Street, Fort Collins, CO 80523, United States
AU: Krueger, D A
EM: krueger@lamar.colostate.edu
AF: Colorado State University, 200 West Lake Street, Fort Collins, CO 80523, United States
AU: Talaat, E
EM: elsayed.talaat@jhuapl.edu
AF: JHU/APL, 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723, United States
AU: Yee, S
EM: Sam.Yee@jhuapl.edu
AF: JHU/APL, 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723, United States
AB: It has long been surmised that due to its large anticipated temperature change in response to external perturbations, solar cycle and/or anthropogenic effect, the mesopause region (80 – 105 km) of the earth's atmosphere is a region of choice for the evaluation of long-term climatic change. Using passive instrumentations, such as OH imagers and in-situ observation by rockets, mesopause region temperatures have been measured intermittently in various locations for more than 3 decades, deducing solar cycle effect and temperature trends. More recently, theoretical prediction and assessment of these effects have been made by a number of general circulation models. Generally, while there is arguably agreement in the solar cycle effect, the observed temperature trends based on simple assumptions is much larger than the predicted values. In this paper, we will examine the effect of wave perturbations on deduced responses and discuss the potential impact of model variability due to various schemes of gravity wave parametrization used. We will present the results of both effects in a mid-latitude location using mesopause temperatures deduced from 16 years nocturnal and 4 years of full-diurnal-cycle sodium lidar observations over Fort Collins, CO (40.6N, 105W), as well as 6 years of TIMED/SABER temperature observations. Comparison of these results with previous observations and model predictions, will likely reveal the need for improvements in methods of data analysis, and for continued and enhanced global observations, and thus will indirectly encourage further model studies, seeking a closure between observations and predictions.
DE: 1610 Atmosphere (0315, 0325)
DE: 1640 Remote sensing (1855)
DE: 1655 Water cycles (1836)
SC: SPA-Aeronomy [SA]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting