Transport of resonant atomic hydrogen emissions in the thermosphere and geocorona: Model description and applications

A computer code for calculating global models of atomic hydrogen Lyman seri es volume excitation rates and line-of-sight radiances has been developed f or upper atmospheric modeling and remote sensing data analyses. It is based on the Anderson-Hord algorithm for solving the integral form of the transp ort equation and rigorously accounts for nonisothermal and pure absorption effects within the complete frequency redistribution approximation. Prelimi nary variants of the code have been in use by several groups for several ye ars, and a fully tested version is now available for distribution. In this paper, the method for solving the transport equation is briefly reviewed an d the key parameters identified. Validation of the code is illustrated via comparisons with previously analyzed data sets: STP 78-1 EUV spectrometer l imb profiles and geocoronal "images" obtained with the UV imaging photomete r on DE-1. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.