ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-11-1355-2011 Coincident measurements of PMSE and NLC above ALOMAR (69° N, 16° E) by radar and lidar from 1999–2008 Kaifler N. 1 Baumgarten G. 1 Fiedler J. 1 Latteck R. 1 Lübken F.-J. 1 Rapp M. 1 Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Rostock University, Kühlungsborn, Germany 16 02 2011 11 4 1355 1366 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/1355/2011/acp-11-1355-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/1355/2011/acp-11-1355-2011.pdf

Polar Mesosphere Summer Echoes (PMSE) and Noctilucent Clouds (NLC) have been routinely measured at the ALOMAR research facility in Northern Norway (69° N, 16° E) by lidar and radar, respectively. 2900 h of lidar measurements by the ALOMAR Rayleigh/Mie/Raman lidar were combined with almost 18 000 h of radar measurements by the ALWIN VHF radar, all taken during the years 1999 to 2008, to study simultaneous and common-volume observations of both phenomena. PMSE and NLC are known from both theory and observations to be positively linked. We quantify the occurrences of PMSE and/or NLC and relations in altitude, especially with respect to the lower layer boundaries. The PMSE occurrence rate is with 75.3% considerably higher than the NLC occurrence rate of 19.5%. For overlapping PMSE and NLC observations, we confirm the coincidence of the lower boundaries and find a standard deviation of 1.26 km, hinting at very fast sublimation rates. However, 10.1% of all NLC measurements occur without accompanying PMSE. Comparison of occurrence rates with solar zenith angle reveals that NLC without PMSE mostly occur around midnight indicating that the ice particles were not detected by the radar due to the reduced electron density.

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