Estimating the Migrating Diurnal Tide Component of Mesospheric Water Vapor

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AbstractThis work presents a method for estimating the migrating diurnal tide (DW1) component of mesospheric H2O from observations of the temperature tide and zonal‐mean H2O made by the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument. This work first shows that a 2D least‐squares fit on SABER H2O yields an erroneous DW1 due to retrieval algorithm problems. Consequently, the adiabatic displacement method is used. Applying the method to SABER observations and comparing it with Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) H2O observations reveals that the method reproduces the MLS‐observed H2O DW1 component best in March and June over low‐latitudes in the altitude range between 65 and 75 km where errors range between +5% and +20%. Applying the method for simulations using the Specified Dynamics—Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with Ionosphere/Thermosphere eXtension (SD‐WACCM‐X) indicates that in the model, it is best only in March and not in June. Model simulations further showed that in March, theoretical errors due to the vertical advection assumption and aliasing are best at less than +13% for the low‐latitudes and altitudes between 65 and 75 km. These results, therefore, lead to the conclusion that despite the errors in the vertical advection assumption and aliasing, the adiabatic displacement method performs best in estimating mesospheric H2O DW1 with SABER observations during both March equinox and June solstice over the low latitudes between 65 and 75 km. Results also show that SD‐WACCM‐X satisfactorily simulates the H2O DW1 magnitude and mechanisms only in the March equinox period