Growth, sedimentation, heating and charging of dust particles in the polar summer mesosphere

Some peculiarities of the Earth's dusty ionosphere are considered using as an example the polar summer mesosphere. We discuss in detail growth and sedimentation of nanosized dusty/smoke particles in the upper atmosphere; the impact of nano/micro-particles optical properties on their heating and charging; for instance, it has been shown that oppositely charged dust particles may present in the polar summer mesosphere. We present a simple one-dimensional growth-sedimentation model; the model predicts the size and altitude distributions of dust particles in the mesosphere; e.g, the model predicts the bimodal size distribution of the dust particles.