Remote sensing of neutral temperatures in the Earth's thermosphere using the Lyman‐Birge‐Hopfield bands of N2: Comparisons with satellite drag data

Abstract

This paper presents remotely sensed neutral temperatures obtained from ultraviolet observations and compares them with temperatures from the NRLMSISE‐00 version of the Mass Spectrometer and Incoherent Scatter (MSIS) model (unconstrained and constrained to match the total densities from satellite drag). Latitudinal profiles of the temperatures in the Earth's thermosphere are obtained by inversion of high‐resolution (∼1.3 Å) observations of the (1,1) and (5,4) Lyman‐Birge‐Hopfield (LBH) bands of N2. The spectra are from the High resolution Ionospheric and Thermospheric Spectrograph (HITS) instrument aboard the Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS). The results indicate that on each day examined there was consistency between the remotely sensed thermospheric temperatures, the densities from coincident satellite drag measurements at adjacent altitudes, and the NRLMSISE‐00 model.