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Lunar Tides in the Mesopause Region Obtained from Summer Temperature of the Hydroxyl Emission Layer

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Abstract

The summer mesopause region (altitudes of 82–92 km) is the coldest place in the Earth’s atmosphere; it is influenced by external effects, including lunar tides. In this study, we isolate the lunar tidal harmonics from the temperature series of the hydroxyl emission layer (OH*) obtained from spectrophotometric measurements at the Zvenigorod scientific station of the Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, in the summer seasons of 2000–2016. The OH* temperatures are the weighted average in a layer of ~9 km thick, which has a maximum at an altitude of ~87 km. The analysis made it possible to distinguish lunar oscillations, among which two harmonics in the temperature of the mesopause region are identified for the first time. These oscillations are recognized as the second harmonic of the anomalistic lunar tide (the mean period is ~13.78 days) and the lunar tide with a period of 8 h 17 min, or, interpreting alternatively, the third harmonic of the lunar synodic month (~9.84 days).

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Funding

This study was financially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project no. 19-05-00358a.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    N. N. Pertsev & V. I. Perminov

  2. Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden

    P. A. Dalin

  3. Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    P. A. Dalin

Authors
  1. N. N. Pertsev
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  2. P. A. Dalin
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  3. V. I. Perminov
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Correspondence to N. N. Pertsev.

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Translated by M. Chubarova

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

1.1 Verification of the Possible Influence of the Second Harmonic of the Carrington Solar Period on the Detection of the Lunar Zonal Tide

The frequency proximity of the lunar (mean period 13.6608 days) and solar harmonics (13.6376 days) makes it necessary to verify the dependence of the hydroxyl-temperature response to sinusoidal signals on their period and to compare this with the response to the quasi-sinusoidal signal sin2(δL) representing the zonal tide. A more direct method—the simultaneous selection of two sinusoidal or quasi-sinusoidal signals of close frequencies within the MLRA—is vulnerable to small errors due to the multicollinearity (mutual conditioning) of the basic variables on time series of limited length. The calculations in this verification were based on the same MLRA scheme described in Section 3, except that the quasi-sinusoid sin2(δL) was replaced by two (sinusoidal and cosinusoidal) signals of the same period, which alternately changed with a step of ~0.02 days in the vicinity of the solar and lunar harmonics given above. A pair of signals in the same period made it possible to calculate the amplitude and phase of the input sinusoid corresponding to the largest temperature response.

Figure 2 gives the results of these calculations. It shows the amplitudes of the response to monochromatic signals of different frequencies and the signal sin2(δL). In this case, the amplitude of the latter was determined such that the maximum amplitude of this signal on the time scale was equal to 1, as in the case of monochromatic sinusoids. The vertical lines show the confidence intervals of the response amplitudes for a 90% probability. In addition, Fig. 1 shows the corresponding level of statistical significance (probability of a random response). The test results indicate the following.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Amplitudes of the hydroxyl temperature response to sinusoidal signals with periods in the range of 13.6–13.7 days (solid black line) in comparison with the amplitude of the response to the sin2(δL) signal representing the lunar zonal tide (black triangle). The gray dashed line (right scale) shows the corresponding level of statistical significance. The level of statistical significance for the response to the sin2(δL) signal is shown with a gray circle. Some details of the figure are explained in the text of the Appendix.

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1. The statistical significance and amplitude of the temperature response to a quasi-sinusoidal signal sin2(δL) representing the zonal tide is higher than for monochromatic signals of the same amplitude and period, as well as the solar period of 13.6376 days and other periods in their vicinity.

2. The maximum of the frequency dependence and statistical significance of the temperature response to monochromatic signals is much closer to the lunar period of 13.6608 days than to the solar period of 13.6376 days.

3. The slower decay of this dependence toward shorter periods suggests a slight influence of the indicated solar harmonic on the results for the zonal lunar tide, and, accordingly, a slight distortion of the temperature response to the zonal lunar tide. More accurate conclusions will require much longer time series.

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Pertsev, N.N., Dalin, P.A. & Perminov, V.I. Lunar Tides in the Mesopause Region Obtained from Summer Temperature of the Hydroxyl Emission Layer. Geomagn. Aeron. 61, 259–265 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0016793221020109

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