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Probing the analytical cancellation factor relation using Na lidar and nightglow data from the Andes Lidar Observatory
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  • Javier Fuentes,
  • Fabio Vargas,
  • Pedro Vega,
  • Luis Navarro,
  • Gary Swenson
Javier Fuentes
Gemini Observatory Southern Operations Center
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Fabio Vargas
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Pedro Vega
University of La Serena
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Luis Navarro
Utah State University
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Gary Swenson
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Abstract

The cancellation factor (CF) is a model for the ratio between gravity wave perturbations in the airglow intensity to those in the ambient temperature and is necessary to estimate the momentum and energy flux and flux divergence of gravity waves in the airglow emissions. This study tests the CF model using T/W Na Lidar data and zenith nightglow observations of the OH and O(1S) emissions. The dataset analyzed was obtained during the campaigns carried out in 2015, 2016, and 2017 at the Andes Lidar Observatory (ALO) in Chile. We have used an empirical method to fit the analytical function that describes the CF for vertically propagating waves and compared the quantities through the ratio of airglow wave amplitude registered as a dominant event in the images to the wave amplitude in the lidar temperature. We show that the analytical relationship underestimates the observational results. We obtained good agreement with respect to the theoretical value for the O(1S) emission line. In contrast, the observational CF ratio deviates by a factor of ~2 from the analytical value for the OH emission.
03 Dec 2020Published in Atmosphere volume 11 issue 12 on pages 1311. 10.3390/atmos11121311