WINDII airglow observations of wave superposition and the possible association with historical “bright nights”

Longitudinal variations of airglow emission rate are prominent in all midlatitude nighttime O(1S) lower thermospheric data obtained with the Wind Imaging Interferometer (WINDII) on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). The pattern generally appears as a combination of zonal waves 1, 2, 3, and 4 whose phases propagate at different rates. Sudden localized enhancements of 2 to 4 days duration are sometimes evident, reaching vertically integrated emission rates of 400 R, a factor of 10 higher than minimum values for the same day. These are found to occur when the four wave components come into the same phase at one longitude. It is shown that these highly localized longitudinal maxima are consistent with the historical phenomena known as “bright nights” in which the surroundings of human dark night observers were seen to be illuminated by this enhanced airglow. Plain Language Summary For centuries, going back to the Roman era, people have recorded experiences of brightened skies during the night, called “bright nights.” Currently, scientists study airglow, an emission of light from the high atmosphere, 100 km above us. Satellite observations of a green airglow have shown that it consists of waves 1, 2, 3, and 4 around the earth. It happens that when the peaks of the different waves coincide there is an airglow brightening, and this article demonstrates that this event produces a bright night. The modern data are shown to be entirely consistent with the historical observations. Key Points Historical accounts of naked‐eye “bright nights” have been reported for centuries Candidate airglow bright night events have been identified in the WINDII satellite data set It is found that these are the result of the infrequent superposition of zonal waves of zonal wave numbers 1–4