34th Annual European Meeting on Atmospheric Studies by Optical Methods, Andenes, Norway, 27-31 August 2007

Modelling the mesospheric effects of solar short-wave radiation

C.-F. Enell¹, B. Gustavsson², P. T. Verronen³, E. Turunen¹, Th.Ulich¹, K. Kaila⁴, J. Stegman⁵, U. Brändström⁶, I. Sandahl⁶

¹Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, Sodankylä, Finland,
²Tromsø, Norway,
³Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland,
⁴Dept of Physical Sciences, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland,
⁵Dept of Meteorology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden,
⁶Institute for Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden

Abstract

Auroral electron precipitation enhances the concentrations of odd nitrogen (NOx) in the lower thermosphere. We here use three-dimensional estimates of electron energy deposition, based on ALIS data (radiance calibrated by means of star spectra), as an input to the Sodankylä coupled Ion-neutral Chemistry model (SIC). This enables us to quantify the production of odd nitrogen in an auroral event.

We plan to validate the results by coordinated ground-based and rocket measurements under auroral conditions during the HotPay 2 campaign, which will take place on Andøya in October 2007.