On 29th December, a day after his birthday Yingfei and Dr. Chu were having a regular meeting session discussing his research on Sodium data retrieval when they discovered the Boulder TINa layers – a phenomenon earlier only seen in the Antarctic atmosphere, now observed in Boulder a mid-latitude location for the very first time. Little did he know that this discovery would lead to several news articles and exclusive video coverage of the research!
Using Chu et al. (2020) and Gao et al. (2015), Yingfei was plotting the Sodium (Na) mixing ratio for over 100 km for various Lidar runtimes to see these layers. Initially, they couldn’t see any layers, but then Dr. Chu suggested plotting the mixing ratio for a fixed time of 1-14 UT. That’s when they saw some layers at 13 UT. Yingfei enhanced the uneven color bar to see the TINa layer features more clearly!
They were amazed to see the regular occurencces of Boulder TINa (Thermosphere-Ionosphere Na) layers during the dusk and dawn times. You can read more about these Dusk and Dawn TINa layers here. The Ars Technica coverage can be found here.
In other good news, McMurdo Project has been renewed for 5 more years!!!
