Retrieving mesopause temperature and line-of-sight wind from full-diurnal-cycle Na lidar observations.

Narrowband Na lidar measurement of mesopause region temperatures were pioneered by Fricke and von Zahn in 1985, in 1990 by She et al. at Colorado State University (CSU), with upgrades to measure both temperature and wind in 1994, and under sunlit conditions in 1996 with 24 h continuous observational capability in 2002. This paper details the assumptions and procedures for the retrieval of mesopause region temperatures, line-of-sight winds, and sodium densities from day and night signals from the CSU narrowband Na lidar. The Hanle effect and the effect of the pulsed laser line shape function on the accuracy of temperature and LOS wind retrieval are also discussed.