Abstract
It has long been realized that minor neutral constituents have a controlling influence on the thermal balance of the mesosphere. Following the suggestion by Nicolet (1945) that solar Lyman-a radiation can penetrate to mesospheric heights and ionize nitric oxide, it has become evident that this and other minor constituents also dominate the ionization processes of the D region (Reid, 1967). Information on the height distributions of certain minor constituents, such as ozone and nitric oxide, has been provided by rocket-borne observations, but the data available for others are based on photochemical treatments. The important feature included in recent theoretical models has been the realization that certain constituents have long photochemical lifetimes and their distributions can be seriously affected by transport processes; particular attention has been paid to the effects of eddy and molecular diffusion (Hesstvedt, 1968, 1969; Bowman et al., 1970; Shimazaki and Laird, 1970).
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