Thermosphere climate is controlled in part by cooling to space driven by infrared radiation, primarily from nitric oxide (NO, 5.3μm) and carbon dioxide (CO2, 15μm). The Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument on the Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) satellite has been measuring the vertical distribution of infrared radiation emitted by these species (and others) for nearly 17 years-–more than 6000 days. This data set spans much of Solar Cycle (SC) 23 and all of SC 24 to date. A thermosphere climate index (TCI) has been derived by noting the correlation between 60-day running averages of NO cooling power and three long-term solar and geomagnetic indexes: F10.7 cm solar radio flux, the Ap index of geoeffective solar activity, and the disturbance storm time (Dst) index. A multiple linear regression (MLR) fit of these three parameters to the NO cooling rate over the SABER mission has a better than 0.98 correlation. Applying the MLR constant and coefficients from that fit provides a good estimate of thermospheric cooling back to 1947, the extent of the data available for all three indexes. We examined the percentile distribution of the TCI in quintiles over the five complete solar cycles, and assigned.
