Abstract
Abstract. OH rotational temperatures are widely used to derive mesopause temperatures and their variations. Since most data sets are only based on a fixed set of lines of a single band, it is important to know possible systematic uncertainties related to the choice of lines. Therefore, a comprehensive study of as many OH bands as possible is desirable. For this purpose, astronomical echelle spectrographs at large telescopes are the most suitable instruments. They offer a wide wavelength coverage, relatively high spectral resolution, and high sensitivity. Moreover, since each ground-based astronomical observation has an imprint of the Earth's atmosphere, the data archives of large astronomical facilities are a treasure for atmospheric studies. For our project, we used archival data of the medium-resolution X-shooter echelle spectrograph operated by the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal in Chile. The instrument can simultaneously observe all OH bands that are accessible from ground. We reduced and analysed a set of 343 high-quality spectra taken between 2009 and 2013 to measure OH line intensities and to derive rotational and vibrational temperatures of 25 bands between 0.58 and 2.24 μm. We studied the influence of the selected line set, OH band, upper vibrational level v′, and the molecular data on the derived level populations and temperatures. The rotational temperature results indicate differences by several degrees depending on the selection. The temperatures for bands of even and odd v′ show deviations which increase with v′. A study of the temporal variations revealed that the nocturnal variability pattern changes for v′ from 2 to 9. In particular, the spread of temperatures tends to increase during the night, and the time of the minimum temperature depends on v′. The vibrational temperatures depend on the range of v′ used for their determination, since the higher vibrational levels from 7 to 9 seem to be overpopulated compared to the lower levels. The vibrational temperature tends to increase during the night, while the intensity decreases. Our results support the assumption that the OH emission altitude depends on v′. Moreover, the emission layer appears to rise in the course of the night, which makes the OH thermalisation less efficient. The derived rotational temperatures and their change with v′ seem to be significantly affected by non-equilibrium populations.
Highlights
Analysing temperature variations in the Earth’s mesopause region between 80 and 100 km is important for studying the chemistry, dynamics, and climate evolution in the upper atmosphere
We studied the influence of the selected line set, OH band, upper vibrational level v, and the molecular data on the derived level populations and temperatures
We will describe the influence of different line sets (Sect. 4.1) and OH bands (Sect. 4.2) on Trot and discuss vibrational level populations and temperatures (Sect. 4.3)
Summary
Analysing temperature variations in the Earth’s mesopause region between 80 and 100 km is important for studying the chemistry, dynamics, and climate evolution in the upper atmosphere. Observations of multiple OH bands below 1.1 μm were carried out with different medium-resolution spectrographs covering several 100 nm at Zvenigorod (55.7◦ N) in Russia since the 1960s (Krassovsky et al, 1977; Perminov et al, 2007; Khomich et al, 2008) These studies resulted in Trot that typically showed an increase with v. Since the slit widths range from 0.4 to 1.6 , depending on the arm, and the slit length is 11 , X-shooter observes a very small sky area As this is compensated by the very large main mirror, even spectra with exposure times of only seconds can be used for airglow research. We only considered spectra taken in the most frequently used, so-called stare mode, where the astronomical target is observed centred in the entrance slit (Vernet et al, 2011)
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