Abstract:

An algorithm for obtaining a temperature and volume emission rate profiles in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere from the HRDI measurement is described. Temperature and volume emission rates are derived via perturbation theory by comparing measured brightness to brightness computed from the forward model describe here. Error analysis shows that the methods recovers the temperatures with an error of 7˚ K and volume emission rates with an error of 3% from 80 to 100 km, providing global measurements of these fields in this altitude range for the first time. Results show the structure of the cold summer and mesopause near the poles, the semi-annul oscillation, and the diurnal tidal oscillation as the equator.