Open Access

Stefan Noll, C. Schmidt, W. Kausch, Michael Bittner, S. Kimeswenger

• Chemiluminescent radiation of the vibrationally and rotationally excited hydroxyl (OH) radical, which dominates the nighttime near-infrared emission of the Earth's atmosphere in wide wavelength regions, is an important tracer of the chemical and dynamical state of the mesopause region between 80 and 100 km. As radiative lifetimes and rate coefficients for collision-related transitions depend on the OH energy level, line-dependent emission profiles are expected. However, except for some height differences for whole bands mostly revealed by satellite-based measurements, there is a lack of data for individual lines. We succeeded in deriving effective emission heights for 298 OH lines thanks to the joint observation of a strong quasi-2-day wave (Q2DW) in eight nights in 2017 with the medium-resolution spectrograph X-shooter at the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Chile and the limb-sounding SABER radiometer on the TIMED satellite. Our fitting procedure revealed the most convincingChemiluminescent radiation of the vibrationally and rotationally excited hydroxyl (OH) radical, which dominates the nighttime near-infrared emission of the Earth's atmosphere in wide wavelength regions, is an important tracer of the chemical and dynamical state of the mesopause region between 80 and 100 km. As radiative lifetimes and rate coefficients for collision-related transitions depend on the OH energy level, line-dependent emission profiles are expected. However, except for some height differences for whole bands mostly revealed by satellite-based measurements, there is a lack of data for individual lines. We succeeded in deriving effective emission heights for 298 OH lines thanks to the joint observation of a strong quasi-2-day wave (Q2DW) in eight nights in 2017 with the medium-resolution spectrograph X-shooter at the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Chile and the limb-sounding SABER radiometer on the TIMED satellite. Our fitting procedure revealed the most convincing results for a single wave with a period of about 44 hr and a vertical wavelength of about 32 km. The line-dependent as well as altitude-resolved phases of the Q2DW then resulted in effective heights which differ by up to 8 km and tend to increase with increasing vibrational and rotation excitation. The measured dependence of emission heights and wave amplitudes (which were strongest after midnight) on the line parameters implies the presence of a cold thermalized and a hot non-thermalized population for each vibrational level.…