ALBERT

Description: Airglow observations are a fundamental tool to study the mesospheric part of the atmosphere. In particular the OH* emission layer is subject of many theoretical and observational studies. The choice of different transition bands of the OH* emission can introduce systematic differences between these studies, hence a profound knowledge of these differences is required for comparison. One systematic difference is given by the vertical displacements between OH* profiles due to different transition bands. A previous study has shown that the vertical displacement is highly sensitive to quenching with atomic oxygen. In this work we follow up this idea by investigating the diurnal as well as the seasonal response of OH* to changes in concentrations of atomic and molecular oxygen, the two most effective quenching species of OH*. For this task we employ a quenching model to calculate vertical OH* concentration profiles from simulations made with the SD-WACCM4 chemistry transport model. From this approach we find that despite the strong impact of O and O2 quenching on the vertical OH* structure, a considerable variability between the vertical displacements of different OH* transition bands is also induced by the natural variability of the O3 and H profiles, which primarily participate in the formation of the mesospheric OH* layer. This in particular applies for the diurnal evolution of the vertical displacements, which cannot be explained by changes in abundances of OH* quenching species only. On the other hand, vertical displacements between OH* transition bands and the amount of effective O and O2 quenching show a coherent semi-annual oscillation at lower latitudes that is in phase with the seasonal variability of the diurnal migrating tide. In particular the role of O2 quenching shows a new aspect of the semi-annual oscillation that, to our knowledge, has not been discussed before. By comparison with limb radiance observations from the SABER/TIMED satellite, we find evidence for the same oscillation in the vertical displacement between different OH* transition bands and derived O concentrations. However, our model study also reveals that quenching is not the only driving process of this feature.

Description: The mesospheric OH Meinel emissions are subject of many theoretical and observational studies devoted to this part of the atmosphere. Depending on the initial vibrational level of excitation the altitude of the considered OH Meinel emission is systematically shifted, which has important implications for the intercomparison of different studies considering different transition bands. Previous model studies suggest that these vertical shifts are essentially caused by the process of collisional quenching with atomic oxygen. Following this hypothesis, a recent study found experimental evidence of a coherent seasonality at tropical latitudes between vertical shifts of different OH Meinel bands and changes in atomic oxygen concentrations. Despite the consistent finding of the above mentioned hypothesis, it cannot be excluded that the actual temporal variability of the vertical shifts between different OH Meinel bands may in addition be controlled or even dominated by other processes. It remains an open question whether the observed temporal evolution is indeed mainly controlled by the modulation of the collisional quenching process with atomic oxygen. By means of a sensitivity study which employs a quenching model to simulations made with the SD-WACCM4 chemistry climate model, we aim at assessing this question. From this study we find that the observed seasonality of vertical OH Meinel shifts is only partially controlled by temporal changes in atomic oxygen concentrations, while molecular oxygen has another noticeable impact on the vertical OH Meinel shifts. This in particular becomes evident for the diurnal variability of vertical OH Meinel shifts, which reveal only a poor correlation with the atomic oxygen species. Furthermore, changes in the H + O3 source gases provide another mechanism that can potentially affect the diurnal variability in addition. By comparison with limb radiance observations from the SABER/TIMED satellite this provides an explanation for the less evident diurnal response between changes in O concentrations and vertical OH Meinel shifts. On the other hand, at seasonal timescales the coherency between both quantities is again evident in SABER/TIMED but less pronounced compared to our model simulations.