36th Annual European Meeting on Atmospheric Studies by Optical Methods, 17-22 August 2009, Kyiv, Ukraine

Hotel Payload 2 rocket-borne and ground-based measurements and modelling of electron density and nitric oxide concentration profiles

C.-F. Enell¹, A. Kero¹, T. Raita¹, J. P. Vierinen¹, Th.Ulich¹, E. Turunen², K. Kaila³, J. Hedin⁴, J. Stegman⁴, J. Gumbel⁴, G. Witt⁴, M. Friedrich⁵, U. Brändström⁶, B. Gustavsson⁷, W. Singer⁸, G. Baumgarten⁸

¹Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, Sodankylä, Finland,
²EISCAT Scientific Association, Kiruna, Sweden,
³Dept of Physical Sciences, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland,
⁴Dept of Meteorology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden,
⁵Technical University of Graz, Graz, Austria,
⁶Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden,
⁷Dept of Physics and Technology, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway,
⁸Inst. of Atmospheric Physics, Kühlungsborn, Germany

Abstract

The Hotel Payload 2 (HotPay2) rocket was launched from Andøya Rocket Range in northern Norway on January 31, 2008. The rocket was launched after the passage of an auroral arc at the beginning of an active period following a very quiet period. Among the instruments on HotPay2 were NEMI (Night-Time Emissions from the Mesosphere and Ionosphere), a set of three photometers measuring the NO2 continuum, the N2 first negative and the O2 atmospheric band emissions, and the TU Graz Faraday rotation instrument measuring electron density.

Before and during the launch campaign, both the EISCAT incoherent scatter radar at Tromsø and the ALOMAR lidar and meteor radar were running. Using these measurements and modelling with the Sodankylä Ion Chemistry (SIC) model, we here (1) compare electron density retrieval methods for EISCAT and (2) investigate the impact of the difference between the generally used MSIS temperature profiles and those measured by the ALOMAR lidar on the retrieval of electron density, atomic oxygen and nitric oxide (NO) profiles.