Spaceborne Limb Observations of Artificial Aerosol Clouds

Abstract

The Limb Profiler of the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (LP/OMPS) onboard the Suomi spacecraft (NASA/NОАА) has a high sensitivity to the presence of aerosols in the stratosphere and mesosphere at altitudes of 15 to 90 km. Consequently, with this instrument, it is easy to detect, in particular, the Junge aerosol layer and stratospheric and mesospheric polar clouds and atmospheric trails of large bolides. This paper deals with the Suomi limb profiler observations of aerosol trails remaining at altitudes of 30–65 km after rocket launches. In some cases, an aerosol trail of a rocket has been observed for several days, which makes it possible to use these clouds as indicators in the analysis of wind transport in the stratosphere. Sometimes, clouds were observed not only at the launch site, but far from it in the direction of satellite motion. This phenomenon may be caused by the ballistic transport of aerosol clouds: the unburnt particles in the exhaust plume of a carrier rocket, which are formed at altitudes of ~100 km, which have a velocity smaller than the orbital one, but it is high enough for the cloud to pass along the suborbital trajectory and come back to the atmosphere at a distance of thousands of kilometers from the launch site. The effectiveness of observations of aerosol clouds, both natural and artificial, can be enhanced by using a limb profiler with a large number of observational points distributed over the entire horizon.