Long-term midlatitude mesopause region temperature trend deduced from quarter century (1990–2014) Na lidar observations

The long-term midlatitude temperature trend between 85 and 105 km is deduced from 25 years (March 1990–December 2014) of Na Lidar observations. With a strong warming episode in the 1990s, the time series was least-square fitted to an 11-parameter nonlinear function. This yields a cooling trend starting from an insignificant value of 0.64 ± 0.99 K decade−1 at 85 km, increasing to a maximum of 2.8 ± 0.58 K decade−1 between 91 and 93 km, and then decreasing to a warming trend above 103 km. The geographic altitude dependence of the trend is in general agreement with model predictions. To shed light on the nature of the warming episode, we show that the recently reported prolonged global surface temperature cooling after the Mt Pinatubo eruption can also be very well represented by the same response function.