Effect of Atmospheric Aerosol on Ground-Based Airglow Observations

Abstract

We study how the atmospheric aerosol influences the recorded emission of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The study was performed using the data from an automatic CIMEL CE-318 sun photometer, a part of the global network of ground-based sun photometer stations (AERONET), and observations were made of atomic oxygen [OI] 557.7- and 630-nm emission lines at the Geophysical Observatory of the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (52° N, 103° E). A nonlinear characteristic of the correlation dependence was revealed between the intensities of the 557.7- and 630-nm emissions of the upper atmosphere and the aerosol optical depth (AOD): the correlation coefficients increased for small AOD (below 0.5) and decreased for large turbidities. We identified an observation period with a high positive correlation between the 557.7-/630.0-nm emission intensities and the AOD, presumably associated with vast forest fires.