Zonal winds between 25 and 120 km obtained from solar occultation spectra

Abstract

Zonal winds between altitudes of 25 and 120 km have been obtained from measurements of the Doppler shifts of lines of atmospheric gases in solar occultation spectra collected with the ATMOS spectrometer flown on Spacelab 3. Wind speeds of about 100 ms −1 near 100 km and 25 to 50 ms −1 between 25 and 70 km were observed at latitudes near 30°N and 50°S. The wind speeds were estimated to ± 5 ms −1 and positions of the absorption lines relative to the rest frame of the instrument were simultaneously recovered to 5 × 10 −5 cm −1 .