Middle atmosphere Doppler lidar and aerosol observations on scales down to seconds

Noctilucent clouds (NLC) are the visible manifestation of ice particles in the polar summer mesopause region. These clouds are often modulated by gravity waves on scales of seconds and a few 100 m. Since 1997 NLC have been observed regularly by the ALOMAR Rayleigh/Mie/Raman (RMR) lidar in Northern Norway at 69N, 16E. Only recently the lidar was upgraded to allow higher temporal resolution. Now the modulation of the NLC layer can be observed with sub-second time resolution even during daytime. The lidar also uses a molecular absorption spectrometer to calculate Doppler winds in the strato- and mesosphere. In combination with simultaneous temperature and aerosol measurements the propagation of gravity waves can be investigated. We present high resolution lidar observations of waves in NLC. We observe that the spectrum of fluctuations follows those of saturated gravity waves down to the signal to noise limit of about 10 seconds. Using the capability of the lidar to perform observations at two different locations in the NLC layer we compare those to satellite observations by the cloud imaging and particle size (CIPS) instrument with a horizontal resolution of about 5 km. We observe that the horizontal and temporal structure agrees well only when taking coincident (<10min) and common volume (<10 km) observations. We present initial results on the propagation of waves in temperature and wind throughout the middle atmosphere.