Derivation of Mesospheric Ozone from TIMED/SABER Measurements of the O2 Infrared Atmospheric Band Emission in the Dayglow

The Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometery (SABER) is one of four instruments on NASA's TIMED Mission. SABER is a broad-band limb scanning radiometer that measures infrared emission from atmospheric species between 10 and 280 km tangent point altitude. One of the SABER channels is centered at 1.27 μ m where the O2(a¹Δ _g-- X³σ_g^-) Infrared Atmospheric band emission dominates the atmospheric airglow. In the sunlit mesosphere, direct production of O₂(a¹Δ _g) during solar photolysis of O₃ in the Hartley band is the major source of this O₂ emission and atmospheric ozone abundances between 60 and 90 km can be deduced from the measured O₂(¹Δ _g) volume emission rates using a simple photochemical model. We have inferred the daytime O₃ abundances between 60 and 90 km using SABER measurements taken during the period January 25 2002--January 24 2003. In this paper the derived O₃ concentrations are presented and compared with those obtained from other observations and predictions by photochemical models.