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End date: 2009 × Start date: 2008 × DDC: 550 × Has files: Yes × Publisher: Göttingen : Copernicus × Subject: ionosphere ×

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    Charging of mesospheric aerosol particles: The role of photodetachment and photoionization from meteoric smoke and ice particles
    (Göttingen : Copernicus, 2009) Rapp, M.
    Time constants for photodetachment, photoemission, and electron capture are considered for two classes of mesospheric aerosol particles, i.e., meteor smoke particles (MSPs) and pure water ice particles. Assuming that MSPs consist of metal oxides like Fe2O3 or SiO, we find that during daytime conditions photodetachment by solar photons is up to 4 orders of magnitude faster than electron attachment such that MSPs cannot be negatively charged in the presence of sunlight. Rather, even photoemission can compete with electron capture unless the electron density becomes very large (≫1000 cm-3) such that MSPs should either be positively charged or neutral in the case of large electron densities. For pure water ice particles, however, both photodetachment and photoemission are negligible due to the wavelength characteristics of its absorption cross section and because the flux of solar photons has already dropped significantly at such short wavelengths. This means that water ice particles should normally be negatively charged. Hence, our results can readily explain the repeated observation of the coexistence of positive and negative aerosol particles in the polar summer mesopause, i.e., small MSPs should be positively charged and ice particles should be negatively charged. These results have further important implications for our understanding of the nucleation of mesospheric ice particles as well as for the interpretation of incoherent scatter radar observations of MSPs. © 2009 Author(s).
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    Long-term trends in the ionospheric E and F1 regions
    (Göttingen : Copernicus, 2008) Bremer, J.
    Ground based ionosonde measurements are the most essential source of information about long-term variations in the ionospheric E and F1 regions. Data of such observations have been derived at many different ionospheric stations all over the world some for more than 50 years. The standard parameters foE, h'E, and foF1 are used for trend analyses in this paper. Two main problems have to be considered in these analyses. Firstly, the data series have to be homogeneous, i.e. the observations should not be disturbed by artificial steps due to technical reasons or changes in the evaluation algorithm. Secondly, the strong solar and geomagnetic influences upon the ionospheric data have carefully to be removed by an appropriate regression analysis. Otherwise the small trends in the different ionospheric parameters cannot be detected. The trends derived at individual stations differ markedly, however their dependence on geographic or geomagnetic latitude is only small. Nevertheless, the mean global trends estimated from the trends at the different stations show some general behaviour (positive trends in foE and foF1, negative trend in h'E) which can at least qualitatively be explained by an increasing atmospheric greenhouse effect (increase of CO2 content and other greenhouse gases) and decreasing ozone values. The positive foE trend is also in qualitative agreement with rocket mass spectrometer observations of ion densities in the E region. First indications could be found that the changing ozone trend at mid-latitudes (before about 1979, between 1979 until 1995, and after about 1995) modifies the estimated mean foE trend.