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Deducing non-migrating diurnal tides in the middle thermosphere with GOLD observations of the Earth's far ultraviolet dayglow from geostationary orbit
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  • Christopher Scott Krier,
  • Scott L England,
  • Katelynn R Greer,
  • Joseph S. Evans,
  • Alan G. Burns,
  • Richard W Eastes
Christopher Scott Krier
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Scott L England
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Katelynn R Greer
University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Boulder
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Joseph S. Evans
Computational Physics, Incorporated, Computational Physics, Incorporated
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Alan G. Burns
National Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), National Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
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Richard W Eastes
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
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Abstract

The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) Mission images middle thermosphere temperature and the vertical column density ratio of oxygen to molecular nitrogen (ΣO/N2) using its far ultraviolet imaging spectrographs in geostationary orbit. Since GOLD only measures these quantities during daylight, and only over the ~140º of longitude visible from geostationary orbit, previously developed tidal analysis techniques cannot be applied to the GOLD dataset. This paper presents a novel approach that deduces two specified non-migrating diurnal tides using simultaneous measurements of temperature and ΣO/N2. DE3 (diurnal eastward propagating wave 3) and DE2 (diurnal eastward propagating wave 2) during October 2018 and January 2020 are the focus of this paper. Sensitivity analyses using TIE-GCM simulations reveal that our approach reliably retrieves the true phases, whereas residual contributions from tides assumed to be absent, the restriction in longitude, and random uncertainty can lead to ~ 50% error in the retrieved amplitudes. Application of our approach to GOLD data during these time periods provides the first observations of non-migrating diurnal tides in measurements taken from geostationary orbit. We identify discrepancies between GOLD observations and TIE-GCM modeling. Retrieved tidal amplitudes from GOLD observations exceed their respective TIE-GCM amplitudes by a factor of two in some cases.
Oct 2021Published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics volume 126 issue 10. 10.1029/2021JA029563