Atmos. Chem. Phys.

, 10, 11439–11446, 2010

www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/11439/2010/ Atmospheric
doi:10.5194/acp-10-11439-2010 Chemistry
© Author(s) 2010. CC Attribution 3.0 License. and Physics

Stability of temperatures from TIMED/SABER v1.07 (2002–2009)

and Aura/MLS v2.2 (2004–2009) compared with OH(6-2)
temperatures observed at Davis Station, Antarctica
W. J. R. French1 and F. J. Mulligan2
1 Australian Antarctic Division, Kingston, Tasmania, Australia
2 National University of Ireland Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
Received: 7 July 2010 – Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 10 September 2010
Revised: 18 November 2010 – Accepted: 19 November 2010 – Published: 3 December 2010

Abstract. Temperature profiles from two satellite instru- 1 Introduction

ments – TIMED/SABER and Aura/MLS – have been used
to calculate hydroxyl-layer equivalent temperatures for com- The SABER (Sounding of the Atmosphere by Broadband
parison with values measured from OH(6-2) emission lines Emission Radiometry) instrument on board the NASA’s
observed by a ground-based spectrometer located at Davis TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Electrody-
Station, Antarctica (68◦ S, 78◦ E). The profile selection cri- namics) satellite has been providing temperature profiles as
teria – miss-distance <500 km from the ground station and one of its level 2 products since early 2002 (Mertens et al.,
solar zenith angles >97◦ – yielded a total of 2359 SABER 2001). Several reports of comparisons between SABER tem-
profiles over 8 years (2002–2009) and 7407 MLS profiles peratures and those measured by ground-based techniques
over 5.5 years (2004–2009). The availability of simultaneous and instruments have been published in the past few years
OH volume emission rate (VER) profiles from the SABER (e.g., Mertens et al., 2004; Oberheide et al., 2006; Xu et
(OH-B channel) enabled an assessment of the impact of sev- al., 2006; López-González et al., 2007; Mulligan and Lowe,
eral different weighting functions in the calculation of OH- 2008; Remsberg et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2010). Each report
equivalent temperatures. The maximum difference between provides an estimate of the offset or bias between SABER
all derived hydroxyl layer equivalent temperatures was less and the comparator dataset (see Table 2 in Supplement). All
than 3 K. Restricting the miss-distance and miss-time criteria of these studies involve relatively short data runs, the longest
showed little effect on the bias, suggesting that the OH layer of which was the three-year (2003–2006) study of Oberheide
is relatively uniform over the spatial and temporal scales con- et al. (2006) and they all involve comparisons with data from
sidered. However, a significant trend was found in the bias Northern Hemisphere sites only.
between SABER and Davis OH of ∼0.7 K/year over the 8-
This work differs from previous studies in the follow-
year period with SABER becoming warmer compared with
ing respects: it uses ground-based temperature data from
the Davis OH temperatures. In contrast, Aura/MLS exhib-
a Southern Hemisphere station – Davis Station, Antarctica
ited a cold bias of 9.9 ± 0.4 K compared with Davis OH,
(68◦ S, 78◦ E) and it includes the years 2002–2009 which
but importantly, the bias remained constant over the 2004–
enables us to examine the behaviour of the bias between
2009 year period examined. The difference in bias behaviour
SABER and the Davis dataset during this extended period.
of the two satellites has significant implications for multi-
The instrument at Davis has been well documented (Greet
annual and long-term studies using their data.
et al., 1998; French et al., 2000) and has been providing
well characterised temperature data in every Southern Hemi-
sphere winter season since 1995 (Burns et al., 2003; French
and Burns, 2004; French et al., 2005). We also compare our
Correspondence to: W. J. R. French ground-based observations with temperature profiles from a
(john.french@aad.gov.au) second satellite instrument – the Microwave Limb Sounder

Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.

11440 W. J. R. French and F. J. Mulligan: Bias trends between Hydroxyl, SABER and MLS temperatures

(MLS) on board the EOS (Earth Observing System) Aura corrected for an issue with the orientation of the LBS com-
spacecraft (Schwartz et al., 2008) – over the period 2004– pared to previous published work (Burns et al., 2003; French
2009 to help contextualise our SABER-Davis OH results. and Burns, 2004; French et al., 2005), where the LBS was
measured in the vertical orientation at Davis and cross ref-
erenced with measurements taken with the LBS in the hori-
2 Instrumentation and data zontal orientation at ANMI. A measurable difference in the
spectral radiance of the LBS was detected in 2007 as a result
2.1 Davis spectrometer of the altered shape of the tungsten filament in the different
orientations of the LBS. Correcting the AMNI calibrations to
A 1.26 m f/9 Czerny-Turner scanning spectrometer has op- match the Davis vertical measurements results in cooler OH
erated at Davis each year since 1995 recording the P-branch rotational temperatures by an average 0.9 K.
lines of the OH(6-2) band near 840 nm. Observations are
made in the zenith with a 5.3◦ field-of-view and with an 2.2 SABER
instrument resolution of ∼0.16 nm. A cooled GaAs photo-
multiplier, operated in pulse counting mode, detects the sky The SABER instrument is a radiometer which mea-
emission. Acquisition time is of the order of 7 min per spec- sures Earth limb emission profiles over the spectral range
trum. Further details of the instrument are contained in Greet 1.27–17 µm from the TIMED satellite in circular orbit at
et al. (1998) and French et al. (2000). 625 km inclined at 74◦ to the equator (Russell et al., 1999).
Transition probabilities taken from Langhoff et al. (1986) The latitude coverage ranges from 54◦ S to 82◦ N or 82◦ S
are used to derive rotational temperatures because they are to 54◦ N depending on the yaw cycle. The satellite orbit
a complete set for all bands that are closest to the ex- precesses slowly to complete 24 h local time in 60 days.
perimentally determined ratios of French et al. (2000) for Temperature is retrieved from 15 µm and 4.3 µm CO2 emis-
the OH(6-2) band. Sample temperatures are derived as a sions over an altitude range of 10–105 km, with a verti-
weighted average of temperatures from the three possible ra- cal resolution of about 2 km, and along track resolution of
tios from the P1 (2), P1 (4) and P1 (5) emission lines. The 400 km (Mertens et al., 2002). A summary of the evolu-
weighting factor is the statistical counting error (based on tion of SABER data releases is provided by Remsberg et
the error in estimating each line intensity). P1 (3) is not used al. (2008). Retrievals employ iterative algorithms in the up-
due to contamination by an un-thermalised OH(5-1) P1 (12) per mesosphere lower thermosphere (UMLT) region to ac-
line (French et al., 2000). P1 (2) is corrected for the ∼2% count for non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE)
temperature-dependent contribution by Q1 (5). Auroral ac- radiative transfer effects. An assessment of these algorithms
tivity is monitored via the atomic oxygen line at 844.6 nm. has been made by Mertens et al. (2001, 2002, 2004) and fur-
Backgrounds are selected to balance the small auroral con- ther detail of the v1.07 non-LTE retrieval algorithm is given
tribution (from N2 1PG and N+ by Garcı́a-Comas et al. (2008).
2 Meinel bands) and solar
Fraunhofer absorption for spectra acquired during moonlit Errors in the retrieved temperatures in the 80–100 km re-
conditions. Correction factors account for the difference gion are estimated to be in the range ±1.5–5 K if the ki-
in 3-doubling between the P-branch lines determined with netic temperature profile does not have pronounced vertical
knowledge of the instrument line shape from high-resolution structure (Garcı́a-Comas et al., 2008). Errors are greater in
scans of a frequency-stabilized laser. Further details of the summer polar conditions, but these are not of concern here
rotational temperature analysis procedure are available in since our study concentrates on Southern Hemisphere po-
Burns et al. (2003) and French and Burns (2004). lar winter. In addition to kinetic temperature, volume emis-
Instrument spectral response calibration is maintained by sion rate (VER) profiles are derived simultaneously from the
reference to several Low Brightness Source (LBS) units, OH-B channel, sensitive in the range 1.56–1.72 µm, which
which are cross-referenced annually to Australian National includes mostly the OH(4-2) and OH(5-3) bands. While we
Measurement Institute (ANMI) standards. A total of 863 compare temperatures from OH(6-2) band measurements at
scans of the LBS on the spectrometer and 356 cross- Davis in this study, altitude differences between all the vi-
reference scans of the LBS against ANMI standards were brational levels are not expected to exceed 2 km (McDade,
made over the 2002 to 2009 data interval considered here. 1991). SABER calibration is maintained by reference to an
The instrument response correction has not varied by more internal blackbody (at 247 K) every 446 s. Between each
than 1.1% in the P1 (2)/P1 (5) ratio (the most widely sepa- up/down limb scan pair, views are also made of “cold space”
rated ratio used for a rotational temperature calculation) over and the instrument baffling as an estimate of internal stray
this time, corresponding to a maximum temperature variation light effects (Remsberg et al., 2008).
of 1.1 K due to the different response corrections applied for
all years. The correction uncertainty is generally less than
0.3 K each year, with the exception of 2002 (1.2 K) due to
detector cooling problems. Data used in this study have been

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W. J. R. French and F. J. Mulligan: Bias trends between Hydroxyl, SABER and MLS temperatures 11441

2.3 EOS Aura Microwave Limb Sounder 245

A
230

The EOS (Earth Observing System) Aura spacecraft was 215

Temperature (K)
launched on 15 July 2004 into a near-polar, 705 km altitude, 200

sun-synchronous orbit (Schwartz et al., 2008). It provides 185

almost complete global coverage (82◦ S–82◦ N) with ∼14 170
orbits per day. The MLS (Microwave Limb Sounder) in- 155
strument on board Aura observes thermal microwave emis- 140
sions in different regions from 115 GHz to 2.5 THz. The 2452002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Error Estimate B
MLS field-of-view is in the direction of orbital motion, and 230

it scans the Earth’s limb vertically from ∼5–100 km every 215

Temperature (K)
24.7 s, with an along-track resolution of ∼165 km (increas- 200
ing to 220 km in the UMLT region). Temperature and geopo- 185
tential height profiles are produced on a fixed vertical pres- 170
sure grid by the MLS level 2 (version 2.2 data is used in this 155
study) processing algorithm which is applied to the thermal
140
microwave emissions near the spectral lines 118 GHz O2 and 402002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

234 GHz O18 O. It produces scientifically useful temperature 30

C

profiles for geopotential heights corresponding to the range

T_GFIT - TOH (K)

20
10
316 hPa (∼8 km) to 0.001 hPa (∼97 km) (Schwartz et al., 0
2008). The vertical resolution, as defined by the full width -10

at half maximum (FWHM) of the averaging kernels, varies -20

-30
from 5.3 km at 316 hPa to 9 km at 0.1 hPa and reaches 15 km 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
1
at 0.001 hPa. (Schwartz et al., 2008). The effect of the con-
2 Figure 1. Davis hydroxyl (1677 nights : panel A) and the SABER T_GFIT evaluation (847
siderably lower resolution of the MLS data, compared with Fig. 1. (A) Davis hydroxyl nightly average temperatures (1677
3 nights : panel B) nightly averages overplotted on MSISE-90 model temperatures for 69°S).
a SABER temperature profile, on the results of this study is nights) overplotted on MSISE-90 model temperatures for 69◦ S. Er-
4 Error bars for the Davis OH series are 1 standard error-in-the-mean. An estimate of the
discussed in greater detail in Sect. 4.3. Recent studies uti- ror bars for the Davis OH series are 1 standard error-in-the-mean.
5 SABER error (5K) is plotted for comparison. Panel C shows the SABER–DavisOH
lizing MLS temperature measurements in the MLT region (B) SABER T GFIT nightly averages (847 nights) with an esti-
6 difference.
include an investigation of summer planetary-scale oscilla- mate of the SABER error (5 K) plotted for comparison with the OH
tions by Meek and Manson (2009) and of the quasi 5-day temperatures. (C) The SABER-DavisOH difference for coincident
nights.
wave by von Savigny et al. (2007).
17

age. Figure 1a shows these nightly averages with 1σ error

3 Data quality and analysis bars in comparison with the MSISE-90 model temperatures
for 87 km at 69◦ S. The model shows good agreement with
3.1 Davis OH(6-2) the observations at Davis, and illustrates the full seasonal cy-
cle at this latitude.
Hydroxyl observations at Davis are made when the sun is
more than 7◦ below the horizon, which defines an observ- 3.2 SABER
ing season window between 8 February (day 049) and 23
October (day 296). This interval includes the warm winter SABER version 1.07 data (available at http://saber.gats-inc.
mesopause period with partial coverage of the spring and au- com) were used in this study. A total of 2547 profiles
tumn transition periods. No observations can be obtained (typically 2–4 profiles/day) satisfied the selection criteria
during the cold summer mesopause period. Nightly averages of tangent point within a 500 km radius of Davis and so-
are derived from all 7 min spectra that pass data quality se- lar zenith angle >97◦ (night-time profiles corresponding
lection criteria. Application of these criteria discards mea- to the spectrometer measurements) over the 2002–2009 in-
surements with weighted standard deviation >15 K, counting terval. The satellite 60-day yaw cycle results in SABER
errors >10 K, high backgrounds, large background slopes, observations over Davis in the same three time intervals
and unusual changes of intensity between consecutive scans. each year (days 75–140, 196–262 and 323–014). How-
Burns et al. (2003) have examined the influence of cloud, au- ever, the solar zenith angle criterion (>97◦ ) completely
rora and Fraunhofer absorption in moonlight in these data. rejects the summer interval (days 323–014). Tempera-
A total of 1677 nightly averages are obtained for the 2002 ture profiles were rejected if the VER was unusual, viz,
to 2009 interval from nearly 125 000 individual spectra that the FWHM of the VER profile was >2σ from the mean
pass the selection criteria. A minimum of 10, maximum of profile width (4.8 km<FWHM<11.5 km) or if the pressure
163 (average of 74) samples contribute to each nightly aver- interpolated to 87 km was >2σ from the mean pressure

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11442 W. J. R. French and F. J. Mulligan: Bias trends between Hydroxyl, SABER and MLS temperatures

(0.0012<pressure<0.005 mb) at that altitude (188 profiles Temperature(K)

rejected, leaving 2359). Profiles were also rejected if their 180 200 220 240 260 280
VER profiles departed significantly from a Gaussian shape 110

(measured by the χ 2 fit value) mostly eliminating dou- 105 W_SL

ble peaked VER profiles in a similar fashion to Winick et W_G87
W_VER
al. (2009). Following the application of these criteria, only 100
W_GFIT
those profiles that were within 8 h of the closest OH(6-2) W_VERm
95

Altitude (km)
nightly average were retained giving a total of 2060 profiles. Mean Temperature
In order to compare satellite temperatures with those de- 90
rived from the ground-based instrument, we derive hydroxyl
85
layer equivalent temperatures from satellite profiles using a
weighting function which is representative of the hydroxyl 80
layer (e.g., Oberheide et al., 2006; López-González et al.,
75
2007; Mulligan and Lowe, 2008). In the first part of this
study, we concentrated on SABER profiles because of the 70
availability of simultaneous OH 1.6 µm VER profiles. Five
different weighting profiles were considered as follows: 65
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
– W SL: the weighting function from She and VER (normalized to unit area)
1
Lowe (1998) of the form W SL = (a/(1 + exp(−(z − 2 Figure 2. SABER weighting profiles considered in this study (see text for descriptions),
b + c/2)/d))(1 − 1/(1 + exp(−(z − b − c/2)/e))) Fig. 2. SABER weighting profiles considered in this study (see
3 compared with the mean (winter) mesopause temperature profile derived from the 2359
where the coefficients a = 27; b = 87.133; c = 3.8682; text for descriptions), compared with the mean winter mesopause
4 SABER profiles profile
temperature within 500derived
km range.from the 2359 SABER profiles within
d = 1.8235; e = 2.9306, calculated over the tangent
500 km range.
point altitude (Z) range 70 < Z < 110 km.
– W G87: a Gaussian centred at 87 km with FWHM 8 km
calculated over the range 70 < Z < 104 km. with a standard error of 0.27 K. Table 1 summarizes the mean
differences for the 2060 individual profiles, and 847 nightly
– W VER: the SABER (OH-B) VER profile, evaluated average comparisons. Overall, SABER and OH tempera-
from the altitude of the peak OH VER ±20 km. tures lie within 2 K of each other, no matter which weight-
ing profile is chosen, and whether the comparison is made
– W GFIT: a Gaussian fitted to the altitude of the OH
on an individual profile or nightly average basis. Profiles
VER peak ±20 km, but then weighted to ±17 km.
based on the SABER VER (T VER, T GFIT and T VERm) 18
– W VERm: a profile derived from the mean of the 2359 generally lead to a warm bias while weighting with the She
VER profiles that comprise the initial selection set. and Lowe (1998) profile leads to a cool bias. The smallest
standard deviation in the bias is obtained with the W VERm
These weighting profiles are shown in Fig. 2 with the mean profile. Spatial and temporal variability may contribute to
(and standard error) of the 2359 SABER temperature profile the differences between Davis OH and SABER tempera-
retrievals across the UMLT region. Multiplying each temper- tures since we have accepted all overpasses within 500 km in
ature profile by the corresponding weighting profile yields range and 8 h in time. The effect on bias has been examined
T SL, T G87, T VER, T GFIT and T VERm. The SABER with more restrictive spatio-temporal coincidence criteria;
temperature interpolated to 87 km (T Alt) was also calcu- restricting the range of miss-distance acceptance in 100 km
lated. T GFIT temperatures, derived in this way are shown steps and miss-time acceptance from ±8 h to ±15 min. No
in Fig. 1b. systematic trend in the bias is observed with tighter restric-
tions on either criterion for any of the weighting functions
4 Comparison of SABER with Davis OH(6-2) considered (see Tables 3 and 4 of the Supplement). The
consistency of biases over the span of spatial and tempo-
4.1 The effect of selection criteria on bias and ral ranges considered indicate that the OH layer is largely
correlation uniform over these scales, or that differences are averaged
out in the wide field-of-view of SABER. Burns et al. (2003)
SABER weighted temperatures, for each profile shape, are found good correlation between Davis OH and sodium lidar
compared to the closest OH(6-2) rotational temperature, as temperatures at Syowa station (69◦ S, 39◦ E) at a distance of
individual samples (2060 coincidences) and as nightly aver- 1500 km. The majority of the day-to-day variability is in re-
ages (847 coincidences). The differences (SABER – Davis sponse to large scale planetary waves with spatial extents of
OH) are shown in Fig. 1c for the T GFIT evaluation. The several thousand km (French and Burns, 2004; French et al.,
mean difference (T GFIT – TOH ) in this example is 1.25 K 2005). Tidal amplitudes are small at this latitude (generally

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W. J. R. French and F. J. Mulligan: Bias trends between Hydroxyl, SABER and MLS temperatures 11443

Table 1. A comparison of the mean temperatures and SABER-OH biases for each weighting profile for 2060 individual profiles and 847
nightly averages compared to the closest OH temperature measurement (TOH ) and closest OH nightly average (TOHNA ).

SABER Profiles TOH TOHNA T Alt(K) T SL(K) T G87 T VER T GFIT T VERm
2060 Profiles
Weighted Temp (K) 202.00 203.39 203.76 201.30 202.38 203.81 203.80 203.19
Standard Deviation (K) 12.28 7.43 13.60 9.91 9.85 9.77 10.28 8.74
Standard Error (K) 0.27 0.16 0.30 0.22 0.22 0.22 0.23 0.19
Difference from TOH 1.76 −0.70 0.38 1.81 1.80 1.19
SD of difference 14.72 12.75 12.00 11.90 11.90 11.54
Difference from TOHNA 0.37 −2.09 −1.01 0.42 0.41 −0.20
SD of difference 12.44 9.33 8.59 8.39 8.51 7.63
Linear correlation R 2 0.179 0.203 0.287 0.305 0.336 0.319
Nightly Averages TOHNA T Alt T SL T G87 T VER T GFIT T VERm
847 Profiles
Weighted Temp (K) 203.11 204.26 201.97 202.91 204.34 204.35 203.65
Standard Deviation (K) 7.34 11.77 9.42 9.18 9.03 9.58 8.18
Standard Error (K) 0.25 0.40 0.32 0.32 0.31 0.33 0.28
Difference from TOHNA 1.16 −1.14 −0.19 1.23 1.25 0.54
SD of the difference 10.56 8.98 7.99 7.67 7.85 7.20

less than 2 K) which contributes to the lack of bias deviation source of the drift, it has important implications for the use
over timescales up to 8 h (Hagan et al., 1999). of its temperatures in the assessment of long term change.
Further information on the bias trend may be gained over the
4.2 SABER-Davis OH bias trend next few years as solar activity increases, but for now the
source of the trend in bias remains unresolved.
Our analysis thus far has treated the 2002–2009 comparison
dataset as a whole. Returning to Fig. 1c we now examine the 4.3 Aura/MLS-Davis OH bias and trend
trend in bias over the 8-year time span. Means for each year,
and for each yaw cycle “campaign”, are plotted in Fig. 3a. As a check on the bias trend we have performed the
A linear fit shows an apparent trend in the bias increasing at same comparison exercise using available data from the Mi-
∼0.7 K/year (implying that SABER temperatures are getting crowave Limb Sounder (MLS) on NASA’s Aura satellite. A
warmer compared to the OH measurements) and is indepen- total of 7407 MLS level 2 (version 2.2) profiles between
dent of the weighting function used. To our knowledge such July 2004 and December 2009 satisfied the same accep-
a trend has not been reported in previous comparisons. tance range (<500 km) and solar zenith angle (>97◦ ) crite-
A calibration drift in either instrument could produce such ria used for the SABER analysis. Since our SABER anal-
a trend. The total change in response correction for the Davis ysis demonstrated that OH-equivalent temperatures are rela-
instrument over 2002–2009 equates to about 1.1% or 1.1 K tively insensitive to the shape of the weighting function, we
in temperature from the P1 (2)/P1 (5) ratio (which contributes used only a simple Gaussian weighting profile centred on an
∼57% on average to the weighted mean) and less for the altitude of 87 km and a FWHM of 8.7 km to calculate hy-
other ratios. The uncertainty in the response calibration is droxyl layer equivalent temperatures. A significant cold bias
∼0.3 K. Thus in terms of a calibration drift for the Davis in- of 9.9 ± 0.4 K (MLS colder than Davis OH) was obtained as
strument a change in bias of ∼0.7 K/year (a total of 5.6 K the mean of 1034 nightly averages over the 5.5 years. Impor-
over 8 years) is conservatively at least 5 times the maximum tantly, however, biases derived for each year do not show an
change in response correction and at least 19 times the un- increasing drift between 2004 and 2009 as shown in Fig. 3b.
certainty. One possible consideration for the difference in bias be-
Another possibility for the source of a bias trend could haviour is the effect of the much lower vertical resolu-
be an inaccurate representation of long term changes in CO2 tion of MLS (15 km FWHM) compared with SABER (2 km
or O concentrations in the SABER non-LTE retrieval algo- FWHM). This was investigated in the following manner. All
rithm, perhaps as a consequence of the decrease in solar flux of the SABER profiles that passed the selection criteria were
over the life of the SABER mission (J.-H. Yee and M. López- convolved with averaging kernels of the altitude and width
Puertas, personal communication, 2010). If SABER is the described in Schwartz et al. (2008) for MLS temperature

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11444 W. J. R. French and F. J. Mulligan: Bias trends between Hydroxyl, SABER and MLS temperatures

5
4 A
3

SABER Bias (K)

2
1
0
-1 Bias = 0.66±0.16*Year - 1259.6
95% confidence 0.32 < Slope < 0.99
-2 2
R = 0.56
-3
-62002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
-7 B
-8
MLS Bias (K)

-9
-10
-11
-12 Bias = -0.17±0.10*Year - 333.6
95% confidence -0.44 < Slope < 0.10
-13 2
R = 0.44
-14
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
1

Fig. 3. (A) The mean2 SABER-DavisOH

Figure 3. (Panelbias
A) The meanyear,
for each SABER-DavisOH bias for each
and for each yaw-cycle year, and
campaign, fromforFig.
each1c.yaw-cycle
A straight line fit to the latter
shows a trend in the bias
3 of ∼0.7 K/annum.
campaign, (B) 1C.
from Fig. MLS-DavisOH
A straight bias
line for
fit each year.
to the A straight-line
latter fit to this
shows a trend databias
in the is not
of significantly different
from zero trend at the 95% confidence level.
4 ~0.7 K/annum. (Panel B) MLS-DavisOH bias for each year. A straight-line fit to this data is
5 not significantly different from zero trend at the 95% confidence level.
retrievals, thereby creating SABER profiles with the vertical – Profiles based on the SABER VER (T VER, T GFIT
resolution of an MLS 6 profile (see Fig. 4 of the Supplement). and T VERm) generally lead to a warmer SABER-OH
These “MLS-like” SABER profiles were then weighted with bias while the She and Lowe (1998) and Gaussian at
a Gaussian profile centred at 87 km altitude and FWHM of 87 km weighting profiles generally lead to a cooler bias.
8.7 km to calculate OH-equivalent temperatures comparable
to SABER T G87. – More restrictive spatio-temporal coincidence criteria
Although individual “MLS-like” profiles produced OH- have little effect on the biases obtained indicating that
equivalent temperatures as much as 30 K different from the the hydroxyl layer is largely uniform over the scales
SABER T G87 values, averages for each year were within considered here.
2 K, and the bias drift compared with Davis OH measure- – The SABER-OH bias appears to be increasing at
ments persisted. ∼0.7 K per year over the comparison interval. To our
The effect of applying a relatively broad Gaussian weight- knowledge such a trend has not been previously re-
ing to the higher resolution SABER profile and to the lower ported.
resolution “MLS-like” profile tends to attenuate any differ-
ences between them. On the basis of this investigation, we – This trend is not apparent in equivalent comparisons
conclude that the lower resolution of the Aura profiles does with Aura/MLS measurements.
not significantly change the OH-equivalent temperatures or
the bias stability reported. Recently, Remsberg et al. (2008) have reported an assess-
ment of the quality of the version 1.07 temperature-pressure
profiles of the middle atmosphere from 19 TIMED/SABER.
5 Conclusions They conclude that the SABER v1.07 temperature distribu-
tions can be used to generate the near-global, seasonal and
A comparison of 8 years (2002–2009) of SABER temper- interannual variations of Tk in the UMLT for the period 2002
ature profiles with Davis hydroxyl rotational temperatures to 2008. We agree that the SABER temperatures are a unique
derived with Langhoff et al. (1986) transition probabilities resource for researchers in the UMLT region. Our detailed
shows: comparison of SABER temperatures with OH temperatures
recorded at Davis over an 8-year period (2002–2009) sug-
– The SABER-Davis OH bias was within 2 K averaged
gest that some caution may be needed when using SABER
over 2060 measurement pairs, and within 1.25 K aver-
temperatures over an extended time-period.
aged over 847 nightly averages, for all weighting pro-
files considered.

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W. J. R. French and F. J. Mulligan: Bias trends between Hydroxyl, SABER and MLS temperatures 11445

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Acknowledgements. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assis- 1763-2009, 2009.
tance of the Optical Physicists at Davis in collecting the hydroxyl Mertens, C. J., Mlynczak, M. G. López-Puertas, M. Wintersteiner,
airglow data. This work is supported by the Australian Antarctic P. P. Picard, R. H. Winick, J. R. Gordley, L. L., and Russell
science advisory committee. We thank the TIMED/SABER and III, J. M.: Retrieval of mesospheric and lower thermospheric ki-
Aura/MLS science teams for providing data used in this study. We netic temperature from measurements of CO2 15 µm Earth Limb
also kindly thank two anonymous referees for insightful comment Emission under non-LTE conditions, Geophys. Res. Lett., 28(7),
and helpful suggestions on this manuscript. 1391–1394, doi:10.1029/2000GL012189, 2001.
Mertens, C. J., Mlynczak, M. G., López-Puertas, M., Wintersteiner,
Edited by: F.-J. Lübken P. P., Picard, R. H., Winick, J. R., Gordley, L. L., and Rus-
sell III, J. M.: Retrieval of the kinetic temperature and carbon
dioxide abundance from non-local thermodynamic equilibrium
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