Effective Emission Heights of Various OH Lines From X-shooter and SABER Observations of a Passing Quasi-2-Day Wave

TL;DR

This study derives effective emission heights for 298 OH lines using joint ground-based and satellite observations, revealing line-dependent altitude variations influenced by atmospheric waves and vibrational excitation.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed line-by-line emission height measurements of OH in the mesopause, linking wave dynamics with vibrational and rotational states.

Findings

Emission heights vary by up to 8 km among lines.

Wave amplitudes are strongest after midnight.

Heights increase with vibrational and rotational excitation.

Abstract

Chemiluminescent radiation of the vibrationally and rotationally excited OH radical, which dominates the nighttime near-infrared emission of the Earth's atmosphere in wide wavelength regions, is an important tracer of the chemical and dynamical state of the mesopause region between 80 and 100 km. As radiative lifetimes and rate coefficients for collision-related transitions depend on the OH energy level, line-dependent emission profiles are expected. However, except for some height differences for whole bands mostly revealed by satellite-based measurements, there is a lack of data for individual lines. We succeeded in deriving effective emission heights for 298 OH lines thanks to the joint observation of a strong quasi-2-day wave (Q2DW) in eight nights in 2017 with the medium-resolution spectrograph X-shooter at the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Chile and the limb-sounding SABER radiometer on the TIMED satellite. Our fitting procedure revealed the most convincing results for a single wave with a period of about 44 h and a vertical wavelength of about 32 km. The line-dependent as well as altitude-resolved phases of the Q2DW then resulted in effective heights which differ by up to 8 km and tend to increase with increasing vibrational and rotational excitation. The measured dependence of emission heights and wave amplitudes (which were strongest after midnight) on the line parameters implies the presence of a cold thermalized and a hot non-thermalized population for each vibrational level.