Mesopause Region Temperature and Na Number Density Between 1990 and 2017

Creators

Tao Yuan, Utah State UniversityFollow
Chiao-Yao She, Colorado State University - Fort CollinsFollow

Description

The Colorado State University (CSU) Na lidar performed nocturnal mesopause region Na density and temperature observations between March 1990 and March 2010 at Fort Collins, CO (41.6N, 105W). The lidar was relocated to Utah State University (USU) campus and has continued its regular observation at Logan, Utah (42N, 112W) since September 2010.

Document Type

Dataset

DCMI Type

Dataset

File Format

.txt

Publication Date

4-4-2023

Publisher

Utah State University

Methodology

Due to community interests in the long-term change studies and the proximity of the two locations, we have made a 28-year nocturnal mean time series of Na densities and mesopause region temperatures by combining the data from both locations between 1990 and the end of 2017 for long-term studies. The temporal and spatial resolution is 1-hour and 2-km respectively.

The vertical resolution of the nightly mean temperatures is 2 km. However, for continuity and smoothness, both temperatures [CSU-USU-DailyTemps (1990-207)_pav.txt] and their associated error bars [CSU-USU-DailyTemps (1990-207)_erb.txt] were oversampled at 0.5 km intervals. A warming episode was observed in the first part of the 1990s (peak at 1993) due to Mt. Pinatubo eruption [She et al., 2008]. We determined and removed the warming response and used the warming episode removed 28-year dataset [CSU-USU-DailyTemps (1990-2017)-PinatuboRemoved_pav.txt] to determine the long-term linear trend and solar response in temperatures [She et al., 2019]. The same dataset was used to study the long-term linear trend and solar response of mesopause temperatures and altitudes [Yuan et al., 2019]. For a distribution of nightly hours of observation, see Fig. 1(b) of She et al. [2019]. Unlike the temperature profiles, there is no obvious Na density increase during the episodic warming period.We thus produced the 28-year nightly mean Na density profile and associated error bars, respectively as [CSU-USU-DailyDens (1990-20717)_pav.txt] and [CSU-USU-DailyDens (1990-20717)_erb.txt] without considering the effect of Mt. Pinatubo eruption. The CSU-USU 28-year nightly mean temperatures and Na densities and their error bars (a total of 5 txt files) may be downloaded here.

Start Date

1990

End Date

2017

Language

eng

Code Lists

see README

Disciplines

Physics

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26078/m6b6-r532

Recommended Citation

Yuan, T., & She, C.-Y. (2023). Mesopause Region Temperature and Na Number Density Between 1990 and 2017 [Data set]. Utah State University. https://doi.org/10.26078/M6B6-R532

Checksum

47a263216d20a1c0c5e5b35166692fe8