Abstract
Abstract. We present a novel rocket-borne ion mass spectrometer named ROMARA (ROcket-borne MAss spectrometer for Research in the Atmosphere) for measuring atmospheric positive and negative ions (atomic, molecular and cluster ions) and positively and negatively charged meteor smoke particles. Our ROMARA instrument has, compared to previous rocket-borne ion mass spectrometers, a markedly larger mass range of up to m/z 2000 and a larger sensitivity, particularly for meteor smoke particle detection. The major objectives of this first ROMARA flight included the following: a functional test of the ROMARA instrument, measurements between 55 and 121 km in the mass range of atmospheric positive and negative ions, a first attempt to conduct mass spectrometric measurements in the mass range of meteor smoke particles with mass-to-charge ratios up to m/z 2000, and measurements inside a polar mesospheric winter echo layer as detected by ground-based radar. Our ROMARA measurements took place on the Arctic island of Andøya, Norway, at around noon in April 2018 and represented an integral part of the polar mesospheric winter radar echo (PMWE) rocket campaign. During the rocket flight, ROMARA was operated in a measurement mode, offering maximum sensitivity and the ability to qualitatively detect total ion signatures even beyond its mass-resolving mass range. On this first ROMARA flight we were able to meet all of our objectives. We detected atmospheric species including positive atomic, molecular and cluster ions along with negative molecular ions up to about m/z 100. Above m/z 2000, ROMARA measured strong negative-ion signatures, which are likely due to negatively charged meteor smoke particles.
Highlights
Meteor smoke particles (MSPs) are of considerable current interest since they have several interesting atmospheric roles
MSPs act as nuclei in the formation of mesospheric water ice clouds (Rapp and Thomas, 2006) and as nuclei in the formation of the stratospheric sulfuric acid (Arnold and Fabian, 1980; Arnold et al, 1981; Hervig et al, 2017) and nitric acid aerosol layers (Arnold and Knop, 1989; Arnold et al, 1989; Voigt et al, 2005; Frankland et al, 2015; James et al, 2018; Curtius et al, 2005), which have an impact on ozone and climate (Crutzen and Arnold, 1986)
Electrically charged MSPs have been proposed to play a potential role in the formation of polar mesospheric winter radar echoes (PMWEs) (Rapp et al, 2011; La Hoz and Havnes, 2008)
Summary
Meteor smoke particles (MSPs) are of considerable current interest since they have several interesting atmospheric roles. The first observational indications for the presence of such negatively charged nascent MSPs (>473 u) have been obtained from rocket-borne measurements of ion mass spectrometers by Schulte and Arnold (1992) under twilight conditions. Several rocketborne electrostatic probe measurements provided evidence for larger MSPs than measured by the ion mass spectrometers (Gelinas et al, 1998; Rapp et al, 2005; Lynch et al, 2005; Strelnikov et al, 2012; Robertson et al, 2014; Havnes et al, 2015; Asmus et al, 2017). Besides those direct in situ measurements, more indirect measurements of MSP signatures in the spectra of incoherent scatter radars were reported by several investigators
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