Long term evolution of temperature in the venus upper atmosphere at the evening and morning terminators

For the first time upper mesosphere/lower thermosphere temperatures at the Venusian terminator derived from IR-het spectroscopy between 2009 and 2015 are investigated in order to clarify the local-time dependences, latitudinal dependences and the long-term trend. Measured temperatures were distributed in the range between 140 K and 240 K, with mean values equal to 199 K ± 17 K for the morning side of the terminator and 195 K ± 19 K for the evening side of the terminator. Within the uncertainty no difference between the averaged morning and evening terminator side temperature is found. In addition, no strong latitudinal dependency is observed at these near terminator local times. In contrast IR-het data from 2009 show a strong latitudinal dependency at noon, with a temperature difference of around 60 K between the equatorial and polar region (Sonnabend et al., 2012). Accord with the instruments of the Venus Express mission a northern-southern hemispherical symmetry is observed (Mahieux et al., 2012; Piccialli et al., 2015). The data shows no consistent long-term temperature trend throughout the six years of observation, but a variability in the order of tens of Kelvin for the different observing runs representing a time step of few month to two years. This is about the same order of magnitude as the variability within a single run with a typically time range of 2-10 days. This variation is not connected to the solar cycle. Sub-millimeter observations by Clancy et al. found a relation between temperatures and long-term variation in mesospheric water vapor, SO2, and sulfate aerosols (Clancy and Muhleman, 1991; Clancy et al., 2012). SO2 column densities observed by SOIR at the terminator are fairly stable over the time period of 2006-2011 (Mahieux et al., 2015), supporting the hypothesis of a relation between SO2 and temperature variations. The temperatures derived from the infrared heterodyne spectroscopy (IR-het) are compared to results from the Venus Express space mission (VEx). A consistence with the temperatures from the VEx instruments SOIR, VIRTIS and SPICAV is found. As the instruments probe different local time, SPICAV probes the pure nightside, SOIR across the terminator and IR-het the pure dayside atmosphere it is not surprising that the IR-het temperatures are mostly on the warmer side compared to results from SPICAV and SOIR.