Abstract
A grating spectrometer for hydroxyl (OH) airglow installed at Syowa Station (69°S, 39.6°E) by the 49th Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE49) has been in operation since late February, 2008. A dataset of 153 nights was acquired at this location in the austral winter season of 2008. This dataset shows variations in the rotational temperature over a range of temporal scales. The rotational temperature around the polar mesopause region is high in winter and decreases toward summer, which is a pattern similar to that observed at Davis Station, located at almost the same latitude as Syowa Station. A large temperature variation with a period of several days was observed in early May, 2008. Based on a comparison with a simultaneous dataset obtained by the SABER instrument onboard the TIMED satellite, it is inferred that this rotational temperature variation was due to the modulation of vertical motions around the mesopause.
Highlights
Hydroxyl (OH) airglow is the brightest emission in the nightglow and was first reported by Meinel (1950)
OH airglow measurements have been made at only a limited number of Antarctic locations, but the data obtained in a number of these studies
We focus on a large temperature variation with a period of several days during DOY 123 to 130
Summary
Hydroxyl (OH) airglow is the brightest emission in the nightglow and was first reported by Meinel (1950). Most of these variations in OH rotational temperature and integrated intensity are consistent with vertical motions which cause modulations of the OH peak altitude (Ward, 1999) The results of these earlier studies using a nearly global dataset provided by satellite measurements has enabled great advances to be made in our understanding of OH airglow features. It is known that most variations in the intensity and rotational temperature of OH airglow are caused by modulation of the OH layer by a vertical motion induced by atmospheric waves or circulations Even with such knowledge of OH airglow, ground-based observations are still considered to be an important method by which to monitor the mesopause temperature and local phenomena in the upper mesosphere. The orbit of the TIMED satellite has a 60-day yaw cycle, switching between the northern hemisphere viewing mode (83◦N–52◦S) and southern hemisphere viewing mode (52◦N–83◦S) every 60 days
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