Local time dependence of polar mesospheric clouds: a model study

Schmidt, Francie; Baumgarten, Gerd; Berger, Uwe; Fiedler, Jens; Lübken, Franz-Josef

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8893-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8893-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Sources, propagation, dissipation and impact of gravity waves...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8893-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 12

Research article

|

26 Jun 2018

Research article |

| 26 Jun 2018

Local time dependence of polar mesospheric clouds: a model study

Francie Schmidt, Gerd Baumgarten, Uwe Berger, Jens Fiedler, and Franz-Josef Lübken

Data sets

AIM SOFIE data Global Atmospheric Technologies and Sciences (GATS) http://sofie.gats-inc.com/sofie/index.php

AIM CIPS data Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) http://lasp.colorado.edu/aim/download-data-L3C.php

Short summary

Local time variations of polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) in the Northern Hemisphere are studied using a combination of a global circulation model and a microphysical model. We investigate the brightness, altitude, and occurrence of the clouds and find a good agreement between model and observations. The variations are caused by tidal structures in background parameters. The temperature varies by about 2 K and water vapor by about 3 ppmv at the altitude of ice particle sublimation near 81.5 km.