Robert also posted a link to https://phys.org/news/2023-06-satellite-captures-carbon-dioxide-aurora.html … in a new study in Geophysical Research Letters scientists have been looking at global observation of aurora using carbon dioxide – using satellite date. The aurora affects numerous emissions in different regions of the atmosphere much of which is invisible to the human eye. Earth’s atmosphere is composed of differeing layers. The troposphere is the uppermost. The stratosphgere contains ozone and this protects life on earth from ultra violet radiation. The middle layer is the Mesosphere. This is where meteors begin to burn up as the atmosphere becomes denser and more inpenetrable to small objects from space. At the top of the mesosphere, 80 to 700 km above the surface of the earth, the Mesosphere overlaps with the ionosphere, which is full of charged ions and electrons. At the bottom of the thermosphere is the Karman Line – abouot 100 km above the surface. It denotes the altitude at which satellites can orbit. As many of the auroral emissions occur in the Mesosphere and the Ionosphere they can easily be observed by satellites.They are mostly red or green as a result of excited atomic oxygen. As energetic particles crash into earth’s atmosphere they interact with a mixture of atoms and molecules. One of these is carbon dioxide. In the troposphere carbon dioxide, or co2, is regarded as a greenhouse gas – but it also exists in small amounts near the Karman Line. At this position in the atmosphere, near the bottom of teh Mesosphere, carbon dioxide becomes vibrationally excited during aurora moments , emitting more infrared radiation than typically observed in the atmosphere. One wonders if climate scientists are aware of this and is it factored into their models. Is this one reason why the models do not behave like reality?
Scientists observed infrared signals from carbon dioxide during an aurora and they hope to use the findings to study how aurora work more closely, as well as energy particle precipitation globally. Its data also provides 3D temperature and water vapour measurements through the atmospheric column, as well as trace gases and cloud properties – all by using the NASA Aqua satellite. See also https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103856 …
One may also wonder if carbon dioxide in the traposhere, at the very top of the atmosphere, where it is classified as a greenhouse gase, can possibly play any role in what happens on the surface of the earth as all the action appears to take place in the stratosphere and mesosphere. How does co2 get around all that activity – especially when the Sun is in an active phase as at present.