Sodium lidar measurements of mesopause region temperatures at 23° S

AbstractA sodium lidar, capable of measuring temperature in the 80–100km region, has been in operation at São José dos Campos (23° S, 46 W) since March 2007. Good quality data have been obtained for late autumn, winter and spring, but weather conditions make it extremely difficult to make measurements from mid-November to mid- February. We find the temperature structure to be strongly modulated by tides and gravity waves, but average profiles typically show a primary mesopause height close to 100km with temperatures around 180K, and a tendency for a secondary minimum of about 185K to occur close to 90km. Vertical temperature gradients greater than 50K/km are sometimes seen even on profiles averaged over several hours. The strongest gradients are always positive and are frequently associated with strong gradients in sodium concentration. On the other hand, we frequently see rapid changes in the temperature profile, suggesting that models and non-local temperature measurements, as made by satellite radiometers, for example, are of little use in applications such as the analysis of gravity wave propagation seen in airglow images