Solar heating, chemical heating, and infrared cooling of the mesosphere as revealed by the SABER experiment

The Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) experiment has been operating flawlessly in space for over three years on the NASA Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) spacecraft. SABER measures infrared emission in 10 spectral channels from 1.27 micrometers to 15.4 micrometers in wavelength. A fundamental goal of SABER is to quantify the complex energy balance of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere by making observations from which the rates of solar heating, chemical heating, and infrared radiative cooling can be derived. In this paper we present an overview of the energy balance, the approach to deriving the terms of the energy balance from SABER, and results from the SABER observations.