Photochemistry on the bottom side of the mesospheric Na layer

Yuan, Tao; Feng, Wuhu; Plane, John M. C.; Marsh, Daniel R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-3769-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-3769-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Layered phenomena in the mesopause region (ACP/AMT inter-journal...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-3769-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 6

Research article

|

25 Mar 2019

Research article |

| 25 Mar 2019

Photochemistry on the bottom side of the mesospheric Na layer

Tao Yuan, Wuhu Feng, John M. C. Plane, and Daniel R. Marsh

Data sets

USU Na lidar data T. Yuan https://doi.org/10.15142/T33H26

Short summary

The Na layer in the upper atmosphere is very sensitive to solar radiation and varies considerably during sunrise and sunset. In this paper, we use the lidar observations and an advanced model to investigate this process. We found that the variation is mostly due to the changes in several photochemical reactions involving Na compounds, especially NaHCO₃. We also reveal that the Fe layer in the same region changes more quickly than the Na layer due to a faster reaction rate of FeOH to sunlight.