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Abstract The Mid‐latitude All‐sky‐imaging Network for Geophysical Observations (MANGO) employs a combination of two powerful optical techniques used to observe the dynamics of Earth's upper atmosphere: wide‐field imaging and high‐resolution spectral interferometry. Both techniques observe the naturally occurring airglow emissions produced in the upper atmosphere at 630.0‐ and 557.7‐nm wavelengths. Instruments are deployed to sites across the continental United States, providing the capability to make measurements spanning mid to sub‐auroral latitudes. The current instrument suite in MANGO has six all‐sky imagers (ASIs) observing the 630.0‐nm emission (integrated between ∼200 and 400 km altitude), six ASIs observing the 557.7‐nm emission (integrated between ∼90 and 100 km altitude), and four Fabry‐Perot interferometers measuring neutral winds and temperature at these wavelengths. The deployment of additional imagers is planned. The network makes unprecedented observations of the nighttime thermosphere‐ionosphere dynamics with the expanded field‐of‐view provided by the distributed network of instruments. This paper describes the network, the instruments, the data products, and first results from this effort.
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Resolving Vertical Variations of Horizontal Neutral Winds in Earth's High Latitude Space‐Atmosphere Interaction Region (SAIR)
Abstract Few remote sensing or in‐situ techniques can measure winds in Earth's thermosphere between altitudes of 120 and 200 km. One possible approach within this region uses Doppler spectroscopy of the optical emission from atomic oxygen at 558 nm, although historical approaches have been hindered in the auroral zone because the emission altitude varies dramatically, both across the sky and over time, as a result of changing characteristic energy of auroral precipitation. Thus, a new approach is presented that instead uses this variation as an advantage, to resolve height profiles of the horizontal wind. Emission heights are estimated using the Doppler temperature derived from the 558 nm emission. During periods when the resulting estimates span a wide enough height interval, it is possible to use low order polynomial functions of altitude to model the Doppler shifts observed across the sky and over time, and thus reconstruct height profiles of the horizontal wind components. The technique introduced here is shown to work well provided there are no strong horizontal gradients in the wind field. Conditions satisfying these caveats do occur frequently and the resulting wind profiles validate well when compared to absolute in‐situ wind measurements from a rocket‐borne chemical release. While both the optical and chemical tracer techniques agreed with each other, they did not agree with the HWM‐14 horizontal wind model. Applying this technique to wind measurements near the geomagnetic cusp footprint indicated that cusp‐region forcing did not penetrate to atmospheric heights of 240 km or lower.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2012994
- PAR ID:
- 10370498
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
- Volume:
- 127
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 2169-9380
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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