A Rayleigh-scatter lidar has been in operation at Utah State University (41. 7° N, 111.8 ° W) starting in September 1993 until the present (October 2003). The return profiles from the atmosphere have been analyzed to provide temperature measurements of the middle atmosphere from 45 to 90 km. Various methods of averaging were used to construct a temperature climatology of the region based on these observations. The data analysis algorithm has been critically analyzed to find possible sources of error, and has been compared to an independently derived technique. The resulting temperatures have been compared to other mid-latitude lidars with good agreement. Comparisons were made with temperatures from other ground-based instruments at Bear Lake Observatory. Additional comparisons were carried out with two satellite-based instruments, WINDII and SABER The comparison of individual nights with the SABER instrument produced surprisingly good agreement considering the difference in the two methods. With the basic analysis of the temperature climatology completed in this work, an outline is given for future research and upgrades to the facility.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTAHS/oai:digitalcommons.usu.edu:etd-7993 |
| Date | 01 May 2004 |
| Creators | Herron, Joshua P. |
| Publisher | DigitalCommons@USU |
| Source Sets | Utah State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | All Graduate Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact digitalcommons@usu.edu. |
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