A novel infrared imaging instrument (OH imager) was put into operation in November 2022 at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna (Sweden). The OH imager is dedicated to the study of nightglow emissions coming from the hydroxyl (OH) and molecular oxygen (O₂) layers in the mesopause (80–100 km). Based on a brightness ratio of two OH emission lines, the neutral temperature is estimated at around 87 km. The average daily winter temperature for the period January–April 2023 is 203±10 K.

Temperatures at 85 km around Earth's poles in summer can be so cold that small ice particles form. These can become charged, and, combined with turbulence at these altitudes, they can influence the many electrons present. This can cause large radar echoes called polar mesospheric summer echoes. We use radio waves to heat these echoes on and off when the sun is close to or below the horizon. This allows us to gain some insight into these ice particles and how the sun influences the echoes.

The 2020 summer season has revealed frequent occurrences of noctilucent clouds around the Northern hemisphere at middle latitudes (45–55° N). We have found that there has been a moderate decrease in the upper mesosphere temperature between 2016 and 2020 and no dramatic changes have been observed in temperature in the summer of 2020 at the middle latitude mesopause. At the same time, water vapor concentration has significantly increased in the zonal mean H₂O value in the 2020 summer.

A unique stratospheric balloon-borne observation of noctilucent clouds (NLCs) was performed at night on 5–6 July 2018. A sounding balloon, carrying the NLC camera, reached 20.4 km altitude. NLCs were observed from the stratosphere at large scales (100–1500 km) for the first time. Propagations of gravity waves of various scales were registered. This experiment is rather simple and can be reproduced by the broad geoscience community and amateurs, providing a new technique in NLC observations.

It is well known that occasional eruptions of very high energy protons from the Sun directly impact the middle atmosphere in the polar regions. This paper shows that much more frequent high-speed streams in the plasma wind from the Sun can also modify the same parts of the atmosphere. Their effects are made "visible" by strong enhancement of radar echoes in polar winter and were found to affect half of the days when observations were made at Troll, Antarctica, in 2012 and 2013.