Identification

Title

Carbon dioxide trends in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere

Abstract

We investigated trends of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the upper atmosphere, using data from the Atmosphere Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer and from the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry. Recent analyses of these measurements had indicated that CO2 above approximately 90km appeared to be increasing about twice as fast as it was in the lower atmosphere. Models could not reproduce this differential CO2 trend, calculating instead that the proportional CO2 increase is approximately constant with altitude. We found three issues with the methodologies used to derive trends from CO2 profiles: the way that seasonal changes and sampling are accounted for in the analysis, referred to as deseasonalizing; the registration of profiles in pressure versus altitude coordinates; and data quality indicators. Each of these can have significant effects on the derivation of trends. We applied several deseasonalizing procedures, using both pressure and altitude coordinates, also used a time series fit without deseasonalizing, and applied data quality filters. The derived trends were approximately constant with pressure or altitude, about 5.5% per decade, consistent with lower atmosphere CO2 trends, and consistent with model calculations. We conclude that the difference between the trend of CO2 above the CO2 homopause and the trend in the lower, well-mixed atmosphere is not statistically significant.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d71j9cqb

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact