Sabine Wüst (DLR Oberpfaffenhofen) wird auf unserem IAP-Kolloquium einen Vortrag zum Thema "Observation of the upper mesosphere / lower thermosphere with hydroxyl airglow spectrometers and imagers and results concerning atmospheric dynamics" halten.

Zusammenfassung:

Ground-based measurements of hydroxyl (OH*) airglow have been carried out for almost 100 years. At some sites, data has been collected for decades. These measurements provide, among other things, information about the kinetic temperature, as well as atmospheric waves of different scales. 

Advanced detector technology has greatly simplified the automatic operation of OH* airglow observing instruments, significantly improving the temporal and, in the case of imagers, spatial resolution of these measurements. 

The horizontal resolution of around 10–20 m, for example, achieved by the best OH* airglow imagers today, makes it possible to identify turbulence eddies and estimate the energy emitted by gravity waves, and thus the corresponding heating rates. However, the automatic detection of these vortices is necessary for the analysis of larger data sets. 

A temporal resolution of less than 1 s provides insights into the infrasound range. Nevertheless, observing this range with the help of OH* airglow measurements is currently still quite difficult. In the context of observing and learning more about natural hazards, the detection of infrasound is particularly interesting. 

This presentation provides an overview of the results achieved with our ground-based OH* airglow spectrometers and imagers over the past two decades. The perspectives and challenges are discussed.