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A Compendium of the Non-LTE Atmospheric Emissions Measured by MIPAS
Manuel Lopez-Puertas(1), Bernd Funke(1)
, Sergio Gil-Lopez(1)
, M. E. Koukouli(2)
, Thomas von Clarmann(3)
, Herbert Fischer(3)
, N. Glatthor(3)
, Udo Grabowski(3)
, M. Höpfner(3)
, S. Kellmann(3)
, M. Kiefer(3)
, A. Linden(3)
, M. Milz(3)
, T. Steck(3)
, G. Stiller(3)
, and Martin Kaufmann(4)
(1)
Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, CSIC,
Apdo. 3004,
18008 Granada,
Spain
(2) Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O.Box 149, GR-54124, Thessaloniki, Greece
(3) Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Postfach 3640, D-76021 Karlsruhe, Germany
(4) Research Center Jülich, Building 05.2, Room 3065, 52425 Jülich, Germany
Abstract
The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric
Sounding (MIPAS)
is a
high resolution limb sounder on board ENVISAT which scans the atmosphere
at tangent heights from 6 up to 170 km with global
coverage. Operational data processing by ESA is limited to the
assumption
of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) which holds only for a
limited number of atmospheric emitters in a restricted altitude range.
A dedicated non-LTE data processor has been developed at the
Instituto de
Astrof?sica de Andaluc?a (IAA) and Institut f?r Meteorologie und
Klimaforschung (IMK) in order to derive a manifold of additional
quantities beyond the operational data products relevant to the
chemistry, dynamics and energetics of the middle and upper
atmosphere. The list of atmospheric
parameters inferred under consideration of non-LTE includes
(i) NO, NO2, and CO measured routinely from 6 to 70 km, (ii) pressure,
temperature, CO2, O3, H2O, and CH4 measured in special mode observations
up to 100 km, and (iii) various kinetic constants relevant to non-LTE
populations of NO2, CO2, and H2O. The MIPAS data obtained during the
first 2 years of the mission allowed to study (i) the O3, NOy, HOx
composition changes due to the October/November 2003 solar proton
event, and (ii) the implications of the downward transport of upper
atmospheric NOx
to the stratospheric NOy chemistry in the 2003 Antarctic winter. In
this paper an overview of these scientific results will be presented.
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