Overview of solar response in temperature in the mesosphere and lower

G. BEIG; J. SCHEER; M.G. MLYNCZAK; P. KECKHUT

Reviews of Geophysics

American Geophysical Union

Lugar: Washington DC; Año: 2008 vol. 46 p. 1 - 19

The natural variability in the terrestrial mesosphere needs to be known to correctly quantifyglobal change. The response of the thermal structure to solar activity variations is animportant factor. Some of the earlier studies highly overestimated the mesospheric solarresponse. Modeling of the mesospheric temperature response to solar activity has evolved inrecent years, and measurement techniques as well as the amount of data have improved.Recent investigations revealed much smaller solar signatures and in some case no significantsolar signal at all. However, not much effort has been made to synthesize the results availableso far. This article presents an overview of the energy budget of the mesosphere and lowerthermosphere (MLT) and an up-to-date status of solar response in temperature structure basedon recently available observational data. An objective evaluation of the data sets is attemptedand important factors of uncertainty are discussed.