Reply to Comments by Lei et al. on the Paper Poststorm Thermospheric NO Overcooling? by AV Mikhailov and L. Perrone (2020)

Recently, our paper Poststorm Thermospheric NO Overcooling? has been published in JGR. Lei with colleagues (2012) who have proposed the NO overcooling concept have written Comments on this paper. Below is given our reply. Everywhere MP20 means the reference to the paper by Mikhailov and Perrone (2020). In the beginning to avoid misunderstanding, it is necessary to stress that in MP20 we did not touch on the well-documented process of the thermosphere NO cooling (e.g., Gordiets et al., 1982; Maeda et al., 1989; Mlynczak et al., 2018; Prolss, 2004, 2011; Roble, 1995; Weimer et al., 2011) which mainly takes place in the lower thermosphere. We only explained a decrease of neutral gas density at F-2-layer heights during the recovery storm phase. The effect manifests seasonal dependence which is not explained by the NO overcooling mechanism.

Automated summary

This paper responds to comments by Lei et al. on our study, emphasizing that our findings do not contradict the NO overcooling concept proposed by Lei et al. We explain the decrease in neutral gas density at F-2-layer heights during the recovery storm phase and note that this effect shows a seasonal dependence unrelated to the NO overcooling mechanism.