Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb-Emission Sounder- a new ray for ozone layer's recovery

It seems like the stability of Stratospheric ozone can be recovered with a new scientific device called - The Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb-Emission Sounder (SMILES), the first onboard mechanically cooled superconducting mixer and high resolution mixture for measuring minor atmospheric constituents of stratospheric and mesospheric chemistry. SMILES has shown its excellent performance by collecting huge amount of statistical data for a whole of six-months until it encountered a problem. As the data was analyzed, piles of information were collected from it.


SMILES has the following main scientific objectives :- 

• Space demonstration of a submillimeter sensor technology based on a superconductive mixer and 4-Kelvin mechanical cooler
• Experiments of submillimeter limb-emission sounding of the atmosphere
• Global observation of trace gases in the stratosphere and contribution to the atmospheric sciences

 SMILES contributes to these studies by studying every details of halogen chemistry related to depletion of ozone layer. Some numeric atmospheric model calculation has presented that the global ozone levels will recover to pre-1980 levels towards the middle of 21st century. However, the stability of stratospheric ozone is at risk because of increase in greenhouse gases in tropospheric layer      which in turns cools the former layer. Besides, bromine budget and chemical processes of inorganic chlorine has added to the increasing threats of ozone layer.

SMILES was sent to the International Space station on Sept. 29, 2009, with Kontori1 on HIIB vehicle Tanegashima Space Center in  Japan. It set on to its work after passing several onboard critical tests and started its nominal observations on Earth's atmosphere on Oct. 12, 2009. SMILES performed its work efficiently for 6 months until one of its parts broke down on April 21, 2010.

Weak wavelength radiations of 0.46 to 0.48 millimeters, which corresponds to 624 to 650 gigahertz of frequency were detected by SMILES from the atmospheric constituents. The abundance of the species was retrieved by calculating the spectral lines coming from various molecular species. SMILES can determine ozone layer depletion of  several areas simultaneously with a greater resolution. One sample of such an observation that SMILES has retrieved has about global disturbances is - It showed a sudden warming of the high latitudes of the north pole in winter, 2010 because of vigorous planetary waves in stratospheric layer. During this term a heterogeneous chemistry process has been underway that is the content of Hydrochloric acid decreased in the polar vortex but at the same time the chlorine chemistry was activated by the solar radiation outside the polar night region, resulting high chlorine monoxide in that region.

The first SMILES instrument was developed using the current literature-based spectroscopic values for the parameters of the spectrometer. Researchers have started reevaluating the known atmospheric data to get additional information for testing new parameters.  






[via : discovery news]

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