An assessment of a method for recovering atomic oxygen density profiles from column integrated nightglow intensity measurements Original Research Article

In this paper we evaluate a novel technique for recovering atomic oxygen density profiles in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region from measurements of column integrated nightglow emissions. The technique, originally proposed by Sharp and McDade (1996), exploits the differences between the molecularities of specific nightglow emission features to recover a parameterized atomic oxygen density profile. To test this technique, we generate simulated column integrated nightglow intensities arising from atomic oxygen density profiles that do not fully conform with the assumed parameterization. The simulated intensities are then inverted through the technique to recover the underlying atomic oxygen density profiles. We find that the technique does a very good job of retrieving the general features of the atomic oxygen density profiles. As an added bonus, the recovered atomic oxygen density profiles can be used to reconstruct the vertical profiles of the specific nightglow volume emissions, thus producing vertical profiles from measurements of their integrated intensities. This is important for vertical location of temperatures inferred from ground-based nightglow observations.