Abstract

We describe a simple and accurate satellite-based technique for measuring temperatures throughout the Earth's middle atmosphere, based upon limb profile observations of Rayleigh scattered sunlight. An example of the precision and accuracy of this technique are two analyses limb radiances from the Solar Mesospheric Explorer, which provided a global climatology of temperatures in the poorly sampled mesospheric region from 60-90 km altitude (Clancy and Rusch, 1989); and more recently for the upper stratosphere (Clancy and Rusch, 1991). The SME mesospheric temperatures were derived from ultraviolet (265, 295 nm) limb radiances, which lead to optimum signal-to-noise ratios for measurement of Rayleigh scattering within the low density mesosphere. In figure 1, we reproduce (from Clancy and Rusch, 1989) a limited comparison of SME mesospheric temperatures with SAMS and French lidar observations (Chanin et al., 1987) at an altitude of 65 km and a latitude of 45°N. We also reproduce, in figure 2, the four-year (1982-1986) SME temperature trends for the 60-90 km altitude region.

© 1991 Optical Society of America