TY - JOUR
T1 - Quantifying gravity wave momentum fluxes with mesosphere temperature mappers and correlative instrumentation
AU - Fritts, David C.
AU - Pautet, P. Dominique
AU - Bossert, Katrina
AU - Taylor, Michael J.
AU - Williams, Bifford P.
AU - Iimura, Hiroyuki
AU - Yuan, Tao
AU - Mitchell, Nicholas J.
AU - Stober, Gunter
N1 - Funding Information:
Support for this research was provided by NSF grants AGS-1136269, AGS-1259136, AGS-1042227, and AGS-1135882. The AMTM was designed at USU and the USURF Space Dynamics Laboratory under an Air Force DURIP grant F-49620-02-1-0258. We are most grateful to W.R. Pendleton, Jr., R. Esplin, and D. Mclain for their considerable help with the AMTM development and testing. We thank three anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on the manuscript. Finally, we acknowledge facility support by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Germany, and the ALOMAR Observatory in Norway. AMTM and lidar data are extensive. Hence, only 1 h lidar wind and temperature profiles and AMTM keograms are provided to the NSF CEDAR MADRIGAL database. Researchers wishing to explore collaborative activities with additional data are encouraged to contact Dave Fritts at dave@gats-inc.com or Mike Taylor at Mike.Taylor@usu.edu.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2014/12/27
Y1 - 2014/12/27
N2 - An Advanced Mesosphere Temperature Mapper and other instruments at the Arctic Lidar Observatory for Middle Atmosphere Research in Norway (69.3°N) and at Logan and Bear Lake Observatory in Utah (42°N) are used to demonstrate a new method for quantifying gravity wave (GW) pseudo-momentum fluxes accompanying spatially and temporally localized GW packets. The method improves on previous airglow techniques by employing direct characterization of the GW temperature perturbations averaged over the OH airglow layer and correlative wind and temperature measurements to define the intrinsic GW properties with high confidence. These methods are applied to two events, each of which involves superpositions of GWs having various scales and character. In each case, small-scale GWs were found to achieve transient, but very large, momentum fluxes with magnitudes varying from ~60 to 940 m2 s-2, which are ~1–2 decades larger than mean values. Quantification of the spatial and temporal variations of GW amplitudes and pseudo-momentum fluxes may also enable assessments of the total pseudo-momentum accompanying individual GW packets and of the potential for secondary GW generation that arises from GW localization. We expect that the use of this method will yield key insights into the statistical forcing of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere by GWs, the importance of infrequent large-amplitude events, and their effects on GW spectral evolution with altitude.
AB - An Advanced Mesosphere Temperature Mapper and other instruments at the Arctic Lidar Observatory for Middle Atmosphere Research in Norway (69.3°N) and at Logan and Bear Lake Observatory in Utah (42°N) are used to demonstrate a new method for quantifying gravity wave (GW) pseudo-momentum fluxes accompanying spatially and temporally localized GW packets. The method improves on previous airglow techniques by employing direct characterization of the GW temperature perturbations averaged over the OH airglow layer and correlative wind and temperature measurements to define the intrinsic GW properties with high confidence. These methods are applied to two events, each of which involves superpositions of GWs having various scales and character. In each case, small-scale GWs were found to achieve transient, but very large, momentum fluxes with magnitudes varying from ~60 to 940 m2 s-2, which are ~1–2 decades larger than mean values. Quantification of the spatial and temporal variations of GW amplitudes and pseudo-momentum fluxes may also enable assessments of the total pseudo-momentum accompanying individual GW packets and of the potential for secondary GW generation that arises from GW localization. We expect that the use of this method will yield key insights into the statistical forcing of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere by GWs, the importance of infrequent large-amplitude events, and their effects on GW spectral evolution with altitude.
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U2 - 10.1002/2014JD022150
DO - 10.1002/2014JD022150
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84921436225
VL - 119
SP - 13,583-13,603
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres
SN - 0148-0227
IS - 24
ER -