Intercomparison of kinetic temperature from 15 μm CO2 limb emissions and OH*(3,1) rotational temperature in nearly coincident air masses: SABER, GRIPS

Abstract

Three years (2003-2005) of kinetic temperatures measured by the Sounding the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument on board the TIMED satellite are compared to OH*(3,1) rotational temperatures measured by the Ground Based Infrared P-Branch Spectrometer (GRIPS) located at 7.2°E, 51.3°N in Wuppertal, Germany. Comparisons are confined to nearly coincident air masses (miss distance: ∼600 km, miss time: 30 minutes). OH*(3,1) rotational temperatures are systematically higher by 7.5 K than OH equivalent SABER temperatures derived from 15 μm CO2 limb emissions which is just within the combined error bars. The bias is independent of year and season thus providing additional confidence into allocating the mean altitude of the OH* emission layer to a constant value of 87 km for long-term trend analyses. Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.