Simulated brightness-weighted-temperature swaths from an imager onboard a satellite

The MLT region supports a variety of wave-dynamical processes that regulate the middle-atmosphere’s weather and climate. Imaging instruments provide remote sensing capabilities to study these processes in this region by integrating optically-measurable quantities (such as volume emissions rates) through an instrument's line-of-sight, thus revealing the fluctuations of underlying atmospheric gravity wave (GWs). By situating instruments on space-based platforms, such as the International Space Station (ISS), we can identify and quantify AGWs and variabilities on a regional and global scale to better-understand their influence on the MLT and, more broadly, the ionosphere, thermosphere, and mesosphere (ITM). Of particular interest are airglow imagers, such as the Advance Mesosphere Temperature Mapper (AMTM) (Pautet et. al, AO, 2014) instrument developed at Utah State University that provides high resolution measurements of OH (3,1) emissions to derive temperatures, as well as others (e.g., Sakanoi et al., 2011; Gelinas and Hecht, 2022). Such experiments enable characterizations of mesospheric GWs over a near-global scale. To comprehensively understand the measured data we need to use atmospheric models for processes to determine and explain the underlying GW sources, propagation, and effects, etc. For example, we use data from the Model for Acoustic-Gravity wave Interactions and Coupling (e.g., Snively, GRL, 2013; Zettergren and Snively, JGR, 2015) that simulates GW observables such as effects on winds, temperature and emission rates for atmospheric dynamics following inputs from physically constrained or idealized sources. This volumetric data, specifically the temperature fields and OH volumetric emission rates, can be used to derive brightness-weighted-temperatures (BWT) through lines-of-sight. These synthetic observables can be used to directly compare measurements from the AMTM instrument or other intensity imagers. Here we present an overview of methods and products of the framework used to create these synthetic observables for test cases. We anticipate applications of such methods to closely compare atmospheric model simulations to recent and pending space-based imaging data products