Comparison between the temperature measurements by TIMED/SABER and lidar in the midlatitude

Abstract

[1] Comparisons of monthly mean nighttime temperature profiles observed by the sodium lidar at Colorado State University and TIMED/SABER overpasses are made. In the altitude range from 85 km to about 100 km, the two observations are in very good agreement. Though within each other's error bars, important differences occur below 85 km in the entire year and above 100 km in the summer season. Possible reasons for these difference are high photon noise below 85 km in lidar observations and less than accurate assumptions in the concentration of important chemical species like oxygen (and its quenching rate) in the SABER retrieval above 100 km. However, the two techniques both show the two-level mesopause thermal structure, with the times of change from one level to the other in excellent agreement. Comparison indicates that the highlevel (winter) mesopause altitudes are also in excellent agreement between the two observations, though some difference (2-3 km) may exist in the low-level (summer) mesopause altitudes between ground-based and satellite-borne data. In addition, the difference in local time dependency between lidar and SABER is investigated; this difference makes the comparison of mesopause altitudes difficult.

Modes of zonal mean temperature variability 20–100 km from the TIMED/SABER observations

“…From 85 to 100 km, SABER data and sodium lidar are in quite good agreement (Xu et al, 2006). Errors are about ±1-2 K below 95 km and ±4 K at 100 km and increase to ±3 K at 80 km and ±8 K at 90 km when there are strong temperature inversion layers (García-Comas et al, 2008).…”

Global climatological variability of quasi-two-day waves revealed by TIMED/SABER observations

“…SABER, onboard the TIMED satellite, measures neutral temperature from the stratosphere to the lower thermosphere with high vertical resolution and precision (Xu et al, 2006;Remsberg et al, 2008). Therefore, it has been widely applied in studies of atmospheric structures (Xu et al, 2007a, b;Dou et al, 2009;Gan et al, 2012), GWs (Preusse et al, 2006;John and Kumar, 2012), tides (Zhang et al, 2006;Pancheva et al, 2009;Xu et al, 2009) and PWs .…”

A comparison of ground-based hydroxyl airglow temperatures with SABER/TIMED measurements over 23° N, India

“…RNC, NoRNC, SoRNC, EoRNC and WoRNC, in a two-dimensional image, this spatial coincidence is further contracted to a ±1.5 • latitude-longitude bin. This matched the SABER's horizontal resolution of ∼ 300 km along the line of sight (Xu et al, 2006). Complying with this, about 30 coincidences were available for further study.…”