Abstract:
A number of important problems are a focus mesospheric (80-120 km) dynamics research. One important global atmospheric 'mixing' processes involves the dissipation of Atmospheric Gravity Waves (AGWs) and the acceleration of the meridional circulation (summer to winter pole). This 'residual' circulation is responsible for up welling water vapor in the summer and down welling in winter, transporting NOx's, metals, and other constituents to the lower atmosphere. Waves propagate through the region and to higher altitudes (the ionospheric E-region), contributing to instabilities in both the atmosphere and ionosphere. Remote sensing of this region is accomplished using a number of methods including active remote sensing with radar and lidar, as well as imaging mesospheric atomic and molecular chemilumescence. Problem solving today requires correlative information on winds, temperature, composition for case and climatological studies. The propagating waves perturb the emission brightnesses, providing intrinsic wave information. The presentation will address 1} inferences of intrinsic wave information in imaging airglows, 2} a new, multi-instrumented aeronomy facility at Cerro Pachon, Chile, data examples including instabilities and 'wall waves' observed with Na lidar and imagers. Movies of wave propagation and temporal evolution will be shown.
Biography:
Prof. Swenson earned his BS in physics and math at Wisconsin State University, Superior, 1963; pursued meteorology studies at the U of Texas as a member of the USAF (1963-1964), and his MS and Phd degrees in aeronomy (upper atmospheric science) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1968 and 1975, respectively. He was a research engineer at NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center in Space Environment, 1968-1975, and a research scientist in the Magnetospheric Physics group, 1975-1983. He was a member of the Atmospheric Emissions group at the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Lab, 1983-1996, and group leader 1993-996. He is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the U of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1996-Current. His work at NASA and Lockheed involved atmospheric remote sensing of Aurora and Airglows, and he was a Co-Investigator on the Atmospheric Emissions Photometric Imager flown on STS-9. He was an investigator on a number of shuttle flights imaging spacecraft glow phenomena, and was the PI on the spacecraft glow experiment flown on STS 63. At the U of Illinois, he is the director of the Remote Sensing and Space Sciences group where there is active research in ground based and spacecraft remote sensing of the middle and upper atmosphere using imaging and lidar methods. He teaches courses in Optical Remote Sensing, Senior Design, and Small Satellites (Cubesat).