The regions beyond the north and south poles of the earth are wrapped in layers of magnetic field lines, and the magnetic field lines in and out of the polar regions are almost vertical, becoming the window of the earth’s space to the space environment. China’s 35th Antarctic expedition is carrying a “super laser pointer” that will fire a laser into the window to probe the “middle and upper atmosphere” in the polar region.
Huang wentao, a member of China’s 35th Antarctic expedition zhongshan station and a researcher at the China polar research center, said the team will install and debug the sodium fluorescence doppler lidar system at the zhongshan station during the summer, and then conduct observation during the winter.
Laser radar as active optical remote sensing detection equipment, has the advantages of high spatial and temporal resolution and high detection accuracy, its working principle is laser high into the air and atmospheric material interactions, optical telescopes back scattering light signal, and further measure the atmospheric temperature and wind field data (including wind speed, wind direction, etc.).
The expedition’s cargo includes five modified high-standard container modules that will be assembled at the site into lidar observation modules. Under the condition that the sky is clear and there is no large cloud cover, the lidar can observe continuously for 24 hours. After the winter, the lidar will take the annual effective data collection quantity of more than 500 hours as the target and evenly allocate the observation running time according to the field meteorological conditions.
At present, the lidar observation of the middle and upper atmosphere in the world is not much, there is no record of the wind field observation of the middle and upper atmosphere in the Antarctic region. The project will provide key data for studying the dynamics, chemical characteristics and responses to space weather activity in the middle and upper Antarctic atmosphere.