EGU21-9430, updated on 09 Oct 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9430
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Combining satellite and lidar measurements to investigate the sodium nightglow

Julia Koch1, Adam Bourassa2, Chris Roth2, Nicholas Lloyd2, Titus Yuan3, and Chiao-Yao She4
Julia Koch et al.
  • 1University of Greifswald, Institute of Physics, Atmospheric Physics, Germany
  • 2University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
  • 3Department of Physics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, Utah State University, Logan, USA

Using a combination of different measurement techniques is important to understand the numerous processes happening in the MLT-region. One of those processes is the excitation of atomic sodium by reaction with ozone which leads to emission of electromagnetic radiation: a phenomenon called Airglow. Although the sodium excitation mechanism was already proposed in 1939 by Sidney Chapman and further investigation was done by a great number of scientists, there are still some key parameters that are not well-known today. One of those parameters is the branching ratio fA which determines the amount of sodium in the excited state. Exact knowledge of this value would offer the opportunity to use Na-nightglow measurements to determine sodium profiles in the MLT-region. In this study we used both, satellite measurements and ground-based Lidar measurements to help approach a more reliable branching ratio fA. By comparing measurements that were made by the two instruments OSIRIS on Odin (Satellite) and the Lidar of the Colorado State University (ground-based) we found a branching ratio fA of 0.064 +- 0.028.

How to cite: Koch, J., Bourassa, A., Roth, C., Lloyd, N., Yuan, T., and She, C.-Y.: Combining satellite and lidar measurements to investigate the sodium nightglow, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9430, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9430, 2021.

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