CEDAR email: SHIMMER OH and PMC data now available from SPDF

[Bilitza, Dieter (GSFC-672.0)[GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY]]

SHIMMER OH and PMC data now available from SPDF

David Siskind (david.siskind at nrl.navy.mil) and Dieter Bilitza (dieter.bilitza-1 at nasa.gov) 

The Spatial Heterodyne Imager for Mesospheric Radicals (SHIMMER) was launched on March 7, 2007 and ended its mission on October 24, 2009. SHIMMER obtained mesospheric hydroxyl (OH) radiance profiles of solar resonance fluorescence near 309 nm. These were inverted to retrieve OH density profiles between 60 and 90 km. SHIMMER also observed Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs) from the enhanced scattering of sunlight from ice particles in the upper mesosphere. The full set of data is now available from the SPDF archive at ftp://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/data/. 

The data are provided as ASCII text files and also include summary plots in PostScript format. As a result of the orbital inclination of the satellite (35.4 degrees) and of the viewing geometry of the instrument tropical data are available throughout the mission whereas data from mid-latitudes are only available in the summer hemisphere. For OH, radiance profiles were averaged daily and grouped by latitude into northern tropics (0-15N) and northern mid-latitudes (50-58N). For PMCs, the SHIMMER viewing geometry led to extensive annual coverage equatorward of 58N latitude in both hemispheres, representing the equatorward edge of this primarily polar phenomenon. A Users Guide provides detailed information about these data sets. This data processing and release was made possible through a NASA HDEE data upgrade grant.