Remote sensing of neutral temperatures in the Earth's thermosphere using the Lyman‐Birge‐Hopfield bands of N 2 : Comparisons with satellite drag data

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics 2012-09, Vol.117 (A9)
• Main Authors: Krywonos, Andrey, Murray, D. J., Eastes, R. W., Aksnes, A., Budzien, S. A., Daniell, R. E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0148-0227
• DOI: 10.1029/2011JA017226

This paper presents remotely sensed neutral temperatures obtained from ultraviolet observations and compares them with temperatures from the NRLMSISE‐00 version of the Mass Spectrometer and Incoherent Scatter (MSIS) model (unconstrained and constrained to match the total densities from satellite drag). Latitudinal profiles of the temperatures in the Earth's thermosphere are obtained by inversion of high‐resolution (∼1.3 Å) observations of the (1,1) and (5,4) Lyman‐Birge‐Hopfield (LBH) bands of N 2 . The spectra are from the High resolution Ionospheric and Thermospheric Spectrograph (HITS) instrument aboard the Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS). The results indicate that on each day examined there was consistency between the remotely sensed thermospheric temperatures, the densities from coincident satellite drag measurements at adjacent altitudes, and the NRLMSISE‐00 model. The LBH bands of N2 can be used to obtain temperature in the lower thermosphere Retrieval of temperatures from remotely sensed N2 LBH emissions is described Retrieved temperature agrees well with modeled temperature