Consistency between observational and empirical data of the thermospheric CO2 and NO power

TL;DR

This study compares observational and empirical data of thermospheric CO2 and NO energy emissions, finding consistent properties that support the reliability of empirical models in representing real atmospheric processes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that empirically derived thermospheric energy data align with observational data, validating the empirical approach for studying atmospheric energy emissions.

Findings

No power-law behavior in emitted power from both datasets

Empirical data reliably reflect observational properties

Enhances confidence in empirical thermospheric energy models

Abstract

We explore the temporal evolution of the energy radiated by CO2 and NO from the Earth's thermosphere on a global scale. This investigation is based on both observational and empirically derived data. Firstly, we analyze the daily power observations of CO2 and NO obtained by the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument on the NASA Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) satellite throughout the period 2002 - 2016. Secondly, we perform the same analysis to the empirical daily power emitted by CO2 and NO that were derived recently from the infrared energy budget of the thermosphere during 1947-2016. The tool employed for the analysis of the observational and the empirical datasets is the detrended fluctuation analysis, in order to investigate whether the power emitted by CO2 and by NO in the thermosphere exhibits power-law behaviour. The results obtained from both the observational and empirical data do not support the establishment of the power-law behaviour. This result indicates that the empirically derived data exhibit the same intrinsic properties with the observational ones, thus enhancing their reliability.