2008 Workshop:Meteors and the Upper Atmosphere

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Meteors and the Upper Atmosphere

1 Meteors and the Upper Atmosphere

Location

Davos

Workshop summary

The workshop was held in a short presentation style followed by discussions. There were 14 presentations in the 2 hour session, 7 of which where student presentations, including three delivered by undergraduate students. The agenda included time for open discussion, which was interspersed among the presentations. The attendee list reached approximately 40 participants, nearly 30 of whom were students. We believe this was the highest percentage of student speakers and attendees of all the science related workshops at the CEDAR 2008 meeting. The speakers were, Lars Dyrud and Jason Hinrichs (undergraduate) of CRS, Jorge Chau from Jicamarca Radio Observatory, Meers Oppenheim, and Elizabeth Bass (graduate) from Boston University; Scott Palo from University of Colorado, Diego Janches, Jonathan Sparks (undergraduate) and Jonathan Fentzke (graduate) from CoRA/NWRA; Julio Urbina and Allen Kummer (undergraduate), Akshay Malhotra (graduate) and John Mathews from Penn State University. The speakers and the topics discussed reflected the multi-disciplinary nature of this field, but this year the topics were perhaps dominated by radar observations of meteors. Topics included the meteor deposition of metal layers, modeling of meteor trail and head echoes, modeling of the global meteoric mass flux, observations using ISR radars and a presentation of some of the newly deployed and under construction radars at Penn State and Argentina.

All these subjects showed once again the growing interest by the community in the effects and understanding of meteors and the mesopause. The talks specifically demonstrated a confirmed consensus that, the sources of small, dust size meteors are unaccounted for in earlier studies and existing characterizations of the meteor flux. These dust size meteors are the dominant portion responsible of ISR meteor observations. Now that we have achieved this consensus, much of the research is focusing on how CEDAR meteor research can contribute to improved wind, temperature, and atmospheric density measurements, as well as details on meteor metal deposition.

Finally, the conveners, Diego Janches and Lars Dyrud would like to thank everyone that took part and attended this year’s workshop, and would like to congratulate Allen Kummer and Jonathan Sparks

Date/Time

1300-1500 Wednesday 18 June 2008

Conveners

Format of the Workshop

of scheduled short-presentations, panel discussion, tutorial, round table discussion, other (include descrption)

Duration

2 hours (default)

Estimated attendance

Conflicts with other workshops

CEDAR Science in Latin America, Jicamarca, Arecibo, AMISR

Special technology requests

none

Forum

Comments, Questions, Discussion Forum

Brief Initial Description

Every year approximately 100,000 tons of meteoric material impacts Earth's atmosphere near 100 km altitude. However, many questions remain on this meteor mass and energy flux and the impact of this flux on upper atmospheric chemistry and ionization. For example, global yearly mass flux estimates are not constrained to within an order of magnitude. Of particular importance to the CEDAR community is that meteors account for all of the dust, metal neutral and ionized particles in the upper atmosphere (since there is no convection or diffusion of atoms or particles of this size from the ground all the way to 100 km). Further, meteoric dust is also thought to provide the condensation nuclei for polar mesospheric clouds PMC (high altitude clouds near 80 km), which is the focuses of a current NASA mission (AIM). Yet it remains unclear whether variability in meteor flux generates variability in PMC occurrence. Additionally, CEDAR researchers have used radar reflections from meteor trails to remotely sense winds and temperatures near the mesopause (a very difficult place to take meausurements, too high for lidar to low for fabry-perot measurements). With some success for winds but little success for temperatures. To address these issues, we invite presentations on the physics of meteors and their interaction with the atmosphere and ionosphere. Specific discussion is encouraged on the observation of meteors with NSF and CEDAR supported facilities, or the theoretical interpretation of such observations. We encourage contributions of research attempting to better understand meteors or general aeronomy via meteor observations, including upper atmospheric chemistry and metal layers. We also invite presentations of radar, Lidar and optical observations. Theoretical studies or simulations of the meteors and meteor trail interactions with the atmosphere/ionosphere are also invited.

It is expected that much discussion and presentations during this workshop will center on large radar observations of meteors including observations from Arecibo, Jicamarca, and AMISR, as CEDAR researchers have made serious contributions to the field of meteor science and meteor aeronomy using these radars over the past decade.