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- We used meteor radars observations around the globe combined with data from other instruments to investigate the atmosphere dynamics at the altitudes of meteors, 80-100 km, and also the atmosphere-ionosphere-magnetosphere coupling from space to ground (Lukianova et al., 2025). The considered phenomena are of different time scales, including annual/seasonal variations, sudden stratospheric warming, tides, atmospheric gravity waves (AGW), and short-periods geomagnetic pulsations. Comparison was made at auroral latitudes between statistics of the AGW at 90 km (near mesopause) and their signatures in the ionospheric ionization (traveling ionospheric disturbances) at 250-350 km (Kozlovsky et al., 2025). The results show that the AGWs observed near the mesopause may be generated due to turbulence in the lower atmosphere or due to electrodynamical forces and auroral activity in the ionospheric E-layer near 120 km. Unexpectedly, it was revealed that when the atmospheric circulation is changing from summer-to-winter type, something occurs between 90 and 120 km to prevent downward propagation of AGW (Slide_1). The discovered effect of autumn transition is novel and deserves a more extensive studies in future.
- Another branch of the discussions is related to the meteor astronomy and physics of meteor trails (e.g., Dawkins et al., 2024). In particular, we looked at the height-decay time distributions of meteor trails, which is routinely used for temperature estimate near 90km. Surprisingly, it was found that the temperature is systematically underestimated during Geminids and Quadrantids and overestimated during Perseids and Lyrids (Slide_2). Attempting to fix this, we removed: meteors in the radiant of showers and long-lived non-specular trails of large meteoroids (which number is large during showers). The temperature offset was cancelled for Qua and reduced for Gem, but not affected during Per and Lyr! Although the mean heigh is reduced toward “normal” for all showers… We came to a bold hypothesis that the mesospheric temperature may really increase during Per and Lyr, and a simplified calculation shows that it is not unrealistic. However, this certainly needs (and we plan) a more in-depth investigation to explain this result.
