An Inter-Hemispheric Case Study of Upper Atmospheric Hydrogen Variability for Site Specific Locations: KPNO and CTIO

The Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper (WHAM) Fabry-Perot has surveyed the sky in both the northern and southern hemisphere. WHAM observations consist of high precision, calibrated data sets of the geocoronal hydrogen Balmer series emission, data useful to compare to models using radiative transport codes. Here, the LYAO_RT global resonance radiative transport code of Bishop [1999] is run for multiple sites using both NRLMSISE-00 and WACCM-X hydrogen profiles to model line-of-sight emission intensities for geocoronal hydrogen Balmer series emissions. The resulting model intensities are compared to WHAM observations from Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), Chile and Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), AZ. Inter-hemispheric case studies will be presented corresponding to solstice and equinox conditions. Dusk to dawn and longer time scale intensity variations will also be explored. This work is partially supported by NSF award 2050077, a collaborative effort between ERAU, UW-Madison, UW-Oshkosh, NCAR.