Identification

Title

NOx production due to energetic particle precipitation in the MLT region: Results from ion chemistry model studies

Abstract

Production of neutral species such as NOx(N, NO, and NO2) during particle-induced ionization events plays an important role in the chemistry of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region, especially in high latitudes. The effective production rate of NOx is composed of the direct production in reactions associated with the ionization or dissociation process and of indirect production during subsequent ionic reactions and recombination. A state of the art ion chemistry model is used to study the dependence of the effective production rate of NOx on several atmospheric parameters such as density, temperature, and abundance of atmospheric constituents and trace gases. The resulting effective production rates vary significantly, depending on the atmospheric state, and reach values between 1.2 NOx per ion pair in the lower mesosphere and 1.9 NOx per ion pair in the lower thermosphere. In this paper, an alternative approach to obtain realistic NOx production rates without running a full ion chemistry model is discussed; a database setup and readout system is used to replace ion chemistry calculations. It is compared to the full ion chemistry model and to a thermospheric reduced ion chemistry model combined with constant rate estimation below the mesopause. Database readout performs better than the constant estimate at all altitudes, where above 100km reduced ion chemistry better reproduces full ion chemistry, but database readout performs better in terms of numerical cost.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d70g3m3w

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

2014-03-01T00:00:00Z

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