Abstract

From Aug. 2013 to Oct. 2015, a Rayleigh lidar has been used to study the middle atmosphere at Golmud (36.25°N, 94.54°E), Qinghai, located in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. Mesospheric density profiles from 50 to 90 km were retrieved based on 205 nights of lidar observation, with a total of 1616 hours of operation. We compared our lidar density measurements with SABER observations onboard TIMED satellite and MSIS-00 model data. The results showed that the annual mean density measured by lidar agreed well with SABER data, but both were lower than that of MSIS-00. All datasets exhibited dominant annual oscillation in the mesosphere. From 63 to 85 km, the annual amplitude of lidar density is larger than those of SABER and MSIS-00. PDD (Percentage of Density Difference) was calculated to investigate the mesospheric density climatology. The largest density variations of lidar, MSIS-00, and SABER occurred at around 72 km. Both lidar and SABER PDD reached their maximum in May, about one month earlier than the MSIS-00; while the minimum PDD appeared in late December for all datasets.

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