Dynamics of orographic gravity waves observed in the mesosphere over Auckland Islands during the Deep Propagating Gravity Wave Experiment (DEEPWAVE)

On 14 July 2014 during the Deep Propagating Gravity Wave Experiment (DEEPWAVE), aircraft remote sensing instruments detected large-amplitude gravity wave oscillations within mesospheric airglow and sodium layers at altitudes z ~ 78–83 km downstream of the Auckland Islands, located ~1000 km south of Christchurch, New Zealand. A high-altitude reanalysis and a three-dimensional Fourier gravity wave model are used to investigate the dynamics of this event. At 0700 UTC when the first observations were made, surface flow across the islands’ terrain generated linear three-dimensional wave fields that propagated rapidly to z ~ 78 km, where intense breaking occurred in a narrow layer beneath a zero-wind region at z ~ 83 km. In the following hours, the altitude of weak winds descended under the influence of a large-amplitude migrating semidiurnal tide, leading to intense breaking of these wave fields in subsequent observations starting at 1000 UTC. The linear Fourier model constrained by upstream reanalysis reproduces the salient aspects of observed wave fields, including horizontal wavelengths, phase orientations, temperature and vertical displacement amplitudes, heights and locations of incipient wave breaking, and momentum fluxes. Wave breaking has huge effects on local circulations, with inferred layer-averaged westward flow accelerations of ~350 m s−1 h−1 and dynamical heating rates of ~8 K h−1, supporting recent speculation of important impacts of orographic gravity waves from subantarctic islands on the mean circulation and climate of the middle atmosphere during austral winter

The internal wave field generated by the body and wake of a horizontally moving sphere in a stratified fluid

A combination of ray and Fourier methods is used to describe the linear internal wavefield generated by a horizontally moving, vertically oscillating, source in a stratified fluid. Ray theory is used to approximate the wavefield in a Fourier transform domain. The ray solutions are then superimposed by inverse Fourier transform to produce the spatial solution. This is a more practical approach than calculating the ray solution directly in the spatial domain, and it is general enough to treat background flows with depth dependent shear and stratification. The theory is compared with measurements of the internal wavefield generated in tank experiments by a towed sphere in a uniformly stratified background

Momentum Flux Estimates for South Georgia Island Mountain Waves in the Stratosphere Observed via Satellite

We show high-resolution satellite observations of mountain wave events in the stratosphere above South Georgia Island in the remote southern Atlantic Ocean and compute the wave momentum fluxes for these events. The fluxes are large, and they imply important drag forces on the circulation. Small island orography is generally neglected in mountain wave parameterizations used in global climate models because limited model resolution treats the grid cell containing the island as ocean rather than land. Our results show that satellite observations can be used to quantitatively constrain mountain wave momentum fluxes, and they suggest that mountain waves from island topography may be an important missing source of drag on the atmospheric circulation

Time-Dependent Propagation of Tsunami-Generated Acoustic-Gravity Waves in the Atmosphere

Abstract Tsunami-generated linear acoustic–gravity waves in the atmosphere with altitude-dependent vertical stratification and horizontal background winds are studied with the long-term goal of real-time tsunami warning. The initial-value problem is examined using Fourier–Laplace transforms to investigate the time dependence and to compare the cases of anelastic and compressible atmospheres. The approach includes formulating the linear propagation of acoustic–gravity waves in the vertical, solving the vertical displacement of waves and pressure perturbations numerically as a set of coupled ODEs in the Fourier–Laplace domain, and employing den Iseger’s algorithm to carry out a fast and accurate numerical inverse Laplace transform. Results are presented for three cases with different atmospheric and tsunami profiles. Horizontal background winds enhance wave advection in the horizontal but hinder the vertical transmission of internal waves through the whole atmosphere. The effect of compressibility is significant. The rescaled vertical displacement of internal waves at 100-km altitude shows an arrival at the early stage of wave development due to the acoustic branch that is not present in the anelastic case. The long-term displacement also shows an O(1) difference between the compressible and anelastic results for the cases with uniform and realistic stratification. Compressibility hence affects both the speed and amplitude of energy transmitted to the upper atmosphere because of fast acoustic waves