Characterization of Polar Mesospheric Clouds Using Infrared Measurements from HALOE

Highlights of our results using HALOE include:

-First confirmation that water ice is the primary component of PMCs.

-Quantifying the relationship between PMCs and water vapor enhancement in the polar summer mesosphere.

-The first measurements of decadal variability in PMCs and mesospheric water vapor and temperature.

-Quantifying interhemispheric differences in PMCs and mesospheric water vapor and temperature

The HALOE PMC highlights

Publications

HALOE Vpmc Data

HALOE operated from 11 October 1991 to 21 November 2005 and obtained observations of the polar summer mesosphere in both hemispheres.  A new version of HALOE data (Vpmc) was developed with improvements targeted to the polar mesosphere. 



This work was funded by NASA's Office of Space Science (OSS) and involved:

GATS Inc:  Mark Hervig (Principal Investigator), Larry Gordley, Marty McHugh,  Brian Magill

Hampton University: James Russell III and Jonathan Wrotny

Data Distribution

The ascii files below sumarize every HALOE event measured poleward of 50 degrees.  For each event, the files list the temperature and water vapor at 80 km, PMC altitude, peak PMC extinction, peak PMC volume density, and IWC.  The files are based on Vpmc1.1 and cover late 1991 through late 2005.

Summary file, southern hemisphere
IDL routine to read the summary files

The files below contain climatologies based on the Vpmc1.1 data.  The files are divided into northern hemisphere (NH) and southern hemisphere (SH) and segregated by PMC presence.  The files are in IDL save format, and the provided routine will restore and return the variables to you.  To get the data files, right click and select "download linked file".


Seasonal time series based on 14-year averages (1991-2005) in 5 degree latitude - 5 day bins: