SHIMMER OH and PMC data

This data set was provided by David Siskind (david.siskind@nrl.navy.mil) and was 
funded through a NASA/HDEE Data Upgrade grant. 

The Spatial Heterodyne Imager for Mesospheric Radicals (SHIMMER) was launched on 
March 7, 2007 and ended its mission on October 24, 2009. SHIMMER obtained 
mesospheric hydroxyl (OH) radiance profiles of solar resonance fluorescence near 
309 nm. These were inverted to retrieve OH density profiles between 60 and 90 km. 
SHIMMER also observed Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs) from the enhanced scattering 
of sunlight from ice particles in the upper mesosphere. The full set of data is 
available in this directory (https://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/data/shimmer/). 
As a result of the orbital inclination of the satellite (35.4 degrees) and of the 
viewing geometry of the instrument tropical data are available throughout the 
mission whereas data from mid-latitudes are only available in the summer 
hemisphere. For OH, radiance profiles were averaged daily and grouped by latitude 
into northern tropics (0-15N) and northern mid-latitudes (50-58N). The data are 
further grouped by orbit node (ascending and descending) which separates the data 
by local time interval. For PMCs, the SHIMMER viewing geometry led to extensive 
annual coverage equatorward of 58N latitude in both hemispheres, representing the 
equatorward edge of this primarily polar phenomenon. 
A Users Guide (shimmer_data_manual.pdf) provides detailed information about these 
data sets including a description of the parameters listed, the filenaming
convention used, and references to papers that describe the SHIMMER instrument 
and data analysis in greater detail. 
The data are provided as ASCII text files and also include yearly summary plots 
in PostScript format. 

dieter.bilitza-1@nasa.gov
Feb 17, 2016