Beschreibung:
<jats:p>Recent results for sodium reaction rates have led to a reassessment of the importance of atmospheric sodium constituents and their distribution with height. The largest changes occur at the bottom of the neutral atmospheric sodium layer. A much larger reaction rate coefficient for the three body production of NaO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub> makes this constituent potentially much more dense below about 80 km, whereas the inclusion of photolysis produces a large diurnal variation in the NaOH loss frequency. Because many of the Na reaction rates are still uncertain static calculations for four different options on reaction rates have recently been offered in the literature. We show that only one of these choices is able to produce diurnal variations that are in agreement with recent measurements.</jats:p>