Comment on egusphere-2025-2323

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Abstract
Observations of neutral density in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region of the terrestrial atmosphere are important for understanding lower atmospheric, geomagnetic, and anthropogenic forcing. This study introduces a statistical method for measuring neutral density variations using an extensive dataset of meteor head echoes that were observed using the MAARSY high-power large-aperture (HPLA) mesosphere–stratosphere–troposphere (MST) radar. The method relies on observing the mean geocentric velocity of meteor head echoes as a function of initial detection altitude and day-of-year. The meteor head echo catalog used contains 1.4 million meteor head echoes between 2016–2023. Neutral density variations are observed with a 3 day time and 2 km altitude resolution between 85–115 km. The measurements show variations in neutral density potentially due to geomagnetic and atmospheric events. Variations of 20–40 % are common in the dataset, and agree with the magnitude of atmospheric neutral density fluctuations from an Upper-Atmosphere ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic (UA-ICON) atmosphere model run.

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