Identification

Title

Inferring the global cosmic dust influx to the Earth's atmosphere from lidar observations of the vertical flux of mesospheric Na

Abstract

Estimates of the global influx of cosmic dust are highly uncertain, ranging from 0.4-110 t/d. All meteoric debris that enters the Earth's atmosphere is eventually transported to the surface. The downward fluxes of meteoric metals like mesospheric Na and Fe, in the region below where they are vaporized and where the majority of these species are still in atomic form, are equal to their meteoric ablation influxes, which in turn, are proportional to the total cosmic dust influx. Doppler lidar measurements of mesospheric Na fluxes made throughout the year at the Starfire Optical Range, New Mexico, (35°N) are combined with the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model predictions of the relative geographic variations of the key wave-induced vertical transport processes to infer the global influxes of Na vapor and cosmic dust. The global mean Na influx is estimated to be 16,100 ± 3200 atoms/cm2/s, which corresponds to 278 ± 54 kg/d for the global input of Na vapor and 60 ± 16 t/d for the global influx of cosmic dust.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d72b9012

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

2014-09-18T00:00:00Z

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