Thermospheric Nitric Oxide Cooling Responses to the 14 December 2020 Solar Eclipse

The behaviors of the nitric oxide (NO) cooling in the lower thermosphere during the 14 December 2020 solar eclipse are studied using Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) measurements and WACCM‐X simulations. We found that NO cooling rate decreases during the solar eclipse in both SABER measurements and WACCM‐X simulations. The maximum decrease of the NO cooling is 40% in SABER measurements and 25% in WACCM‐X simulations. The NO cooling process is initiated almost entirely through the collisions with atomic oxygen (O) which depends linearly on NO and O densities and non‐linearly on the neutral temperature. During the eclipse, the NO concentration and temperature decreases are larger than that of O concentration. Consequently, the eclipse‐time NO concentration and temperature decreases are the major drivers of the NO cooling rate decrease. The decreases of the temperature and the NO concentration contribute comparably to the eclipse‐time NO cooling rate decrease.