The dependence of the concentration of sodium gas species on sporadic meteoroid flux

The primary source of the sodium layer in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region is the mass deposit of the sporadic meteoroids when they enter the Earth`s atmosphere. This work aims to investigate the correspondence between mid-to-long term meteor flux variation and the concentrations of Sodium gas species in the MLT region. A high-resolution numerical model of the sodium chemistry species has been developed, which tracks 14 sodium-involved gas species explicitly, with a time resolution of up to 1ms. The time resolution must be considerably higher than the existing numerical sodium chemistry models in order to track short-lived minor sodium species without steady-state approximation. The dataset of this work consists of Lidar observations acquired by the Andes Lidar Observatory (30.15S, 70.44W) and by the Utah State University Lidar Observatory (40.6N, 105.1W). The meteor radiant sources are resolved based on the radar meteor campaigns of Arecibo Observatory (18.2N, 66.45W). The observed sodium and sporadic meteoroid flux are found to be not directly correlated. Our work intends to discover the logical reasoning behind such discrepancy using model simulations and observations.