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Updated: Jun 24, 2026

Emission Spectroscopic Boundary Layer Investigation during Ablative Material Testing in Plasmatron
Published on: June 9, 2016
Ablation, flux, and atmospheric implications of meteors inferred from stratospheric aerosol
D J Cziczo1, D S Thomson, D M Murphy
1Aeronomy Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO 80305, USA.
Abstract:
Single-particle analyses of stratospheric aerosol show that about half of the particles contain 0.5 to 1.0 weight percent meteoritic iron by mass, requiring a total extraterrestrial influx of 8 to 38 gigagrams per year. The sodium/iron ratio in these stratospheric particles is higher and the magnesium/iron and calcium/iron ratios are lower than in chondritic meteorites, implying that the fraction of material that is ablated must lie at the low end of previous estimates and that the extraterrestrial component that resides in the mesosphere and stratosphere is not of chondritic composition.
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