Effect of Atmospheric Aerosol on Ground-Based Airglow Observations

We study how the atmospheric aerosol influences the recorded emission of the Earth's upper atmosphere. The study was performed using the data from an automatic CIMEL CE-318 sun photometer, a part of the global network of ground-based sun photometer stations (AERONET), and observations were made of atomic oxygen [OI] 557.7- and 630-nm emission lines at the Geophysical Observatory of the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (52 degrees N, 103 degrees E). A nonlinear characteristic of the correlation dependence was revealed between the intensities of the 557.7- and 630-nm emissions of the upper atmosphere and the aerosol optical depth (AOD): the correlation coefficients increased for small AOD (below 0.5) and decreased for large turbidities. We identified an observation period with a high positive correlation between the 557.7-/630.0-nm emission intensities and the AOD, presumably associated with vast forest fires.