OH "Rotational" Temperatures

Abstract:

It is customary to determine temperatures in the mesosphere and MLT by using Boltzmann plots based on the distributions of the lowest rotational levels in the bands of the OH Meinel system, assuming that populations in these levels are in LTE with the kinetic temperature. The higher rotational levels are clearly not in LTE, and using sky spectra from the large telescopes (Keck, VLT) has now shown that this assumption is invalid even for low rotational levels [Cosby and Slanger, 2007; Noll et al. 2014]. The apparent temperatures derived from such Boltzmann plots show an upward trend with increasing OH vibrational level, from v = 2 to v = 9, with reproducible structure such that there is always a peak at v = 8. Over this range of vibrational levels, the “temperature” increase with increasing altitude is on the order of 15-20 K. At the same time, the modeled kinetic temperature is decreasing, as the OH layer lies below the mesopause, and rocket/satellite measurements indicate that the highest levels have the highest altitude. Since this technique of kinetic temperature assessment has been in use for many years, it is important to realize that the procedure is flawed, most likely due to the details of the relaxation processes of OH(v).