High-resolution Doppler imager: instrument performance from late 1991 to mid-1999

The High Resolution Doppler Imager (HRDI) on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite has been providing measurements of the wind field in the stratosphere, mesosphere, and lower thermosphere since November 1991. Mesospheric temperatures, ozone and O(1D) densities, and stratospheric aerosol extinctions coefficients, are also retrieved. The instrument characteristics have been carefully monitored by frequent calibrations during the nearly eight years of operation. The instrument sensitivity showed a significant decrease (close to 50% in some cases) during the first seven and a half years of operation which was caused by the piezoelectric-controlled etalons slowly drifting from a parallel state. A recalibration of the etalons in late 1998 resulted in close to a complete recovery of the instrument sensitivity. The loss of sensitivity was linear with time, with discrete changes occurring at times. Careful modeling of the data permits a determination of the sensitivity as a function of time, allowing the data to be corrected for this systematic effect.

[1]  Paul B. Hays,et al.  Atmospheric wind measurements with the high-resolution Doppler imager , 1995 .

[2]  Paul B. Hays,et al.  The high-resolution Doppler imager on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite , 1993 .

[3]  D. Ortland,et al.  Absorption and emission line shapes in the O(2) atmospheric bands: Theoretical model and limb viewing simulations. , 1989, Applied optics.

[4]  Paul B. Hays,et al.  High-Resolution Doppler Imager: instrument performance in orbit since late 1991 , 1996, Optics + Photonics.

[5]  J. J. Lopez-Moreno,et al.  Altitude profiles of the atmospheric system of O2 and of the green line emission , 1992 .

[6]  T. Killeen,et al.  Image plane detector for the Dynamics Explorer Fabry-Perot interferometer. , 1983, Applied optics.

[7]  Mark R. Schoeberl,et al.  Overview and highlights of the UARS mission , 1994 .

[8]  Paul B. Hays,et al.  The Fabry-Perot Interferometer on Dynamics Explorer , 1981 .

[9]  P. Hays,et al.  Image plane detector for Fabry-Perot interferometers: physical model and improvement with anticoincidence detection. , 1991, Applied optics.

[10]  Carl A. Reber,et al.  The upper atmosphere research satellite , 1984 .

[11]  Paul B. Hays,et al.  Absorption line profiles in a moving atmosphere: A single scattering linear perturbation theory , 1989 .

[12]  Paul B. Hays,et al.  Remote sensing of mesospheric temperature and O2(1Σ) band volume emission rates with the high‐resolution Doppler imager , 1998 .

[13]  P. Hays,et al.  High-resolution optical measurements of atmospheric winds from space. 1: Lower atmosphere molecular absorption. , 1982, Applied optics.