Modeling Studies of Gravity Wave Dynamics in Highly Structured Environments: Reflection, Trapping, Instability, Momentum Transport, Secondary Gravity Waves, and Induced Flow Responses

A compressible numerical model is applied for three-dimensional (3-D) gravity wave (GW) packets undergoing momentum deposition, self-acceleration (SA), breaking, and secondary GW (SGW) generation in the presence of highly-structured environments enabling thermal and/or Doppler ducts, such as a mesospheric inversion layer (MIL), tidal wind (TW), or combination of MIL and TW. Simulations reveal that ducts can strongly modulate GW dynamics. Responses modeled here include reflection, trapping, suppressed transmission, strong local instabilities, reduced SGW generations, higher altitude SGW responses, and induced large-scale flows. Instabilities that arise in ducts experience strong dissipation after they emerge, while trapped smaller-amplitude and smaller-scale GWs can survive in ducts to much later times. Additionally, GW breaking and its associated dynamics enhance the local wind along the GW propagation direction in the ducts, and yield layering in the wind field. However, these dynamics do not yield significant heat transport in the ducts. The failure of GW breaking to induce stratified layers in the temperature field suggests that such heat transport might not be as strong as previously assumed or inferred from observations and theoretical assessments. The present numerical simulations confirm previous finding that MIL generation may not be caused by the breaking of a transient high-frequency GW packet alone.

Gravity Waves in Planetary Atmospheres: Their Effects and Parameterization in Global Circulation Models

The dynamical and thermodynamical importance of gravity waves was initially recognized in the atmosphere of Earth. Extensive studies over recent decades demonstrated that gravity waves exist in atmospheres of other planets, similarly play a significant role in the vertical coupling of atmospheric layers and, thus, must be included in numerical general circulation models. Since the spatial scales of gravity waves are smaller than the typical spatial resolution of most models, atmospheric forcing produced by them must be parameterized. This paper presents a review of gravity waves in planetary atmospheres, outlines their main characteristics and forcing mechanisms, and summarizes approaches to capturing gravity wave effects in numerical models. The main goal of this review is to bridge research communities studying atmospheres of Earth and other planets.

Photomultiplier tube calibration based on Na lidar observation and its effect on heat flux bias

Na lidar can measure vertical wind and temperature at high temporal and vertical resolutions, enough to resolve gravity wave perturbations. Heat flux due to dissipating gravity waves is an important quantity that can be derived from such perturbations. When lidar signals are high, a photomultiplier tube (PMT) used to count incoming photons may suffer from the saturation effect, and its output count is not linearly related to incoming photon counts. Corrections to this effect can be measured in a laboratory setting but may have large errors at high count rates. We show that the errors in the PMT correction can cause significant bias in the heat flux calculation due to the inherent correlation between wind and temperature errors. Using the measurements made by Na lidar at the Andes Lidar Observatory with Hamamatsu PMTs, we developed a calibration procedure to remove such PMT correction errors from laboratory measurements. By applying the revised PMT correction curve we demonstrated that the heat flux bias can be removed through this procedure.

Increasing Ozone over the Atlantic Ocean

Ship-borne ozone (O3) measurements over the Atlantic Ocean during the period from 1977 to 2002 show that O3 trends in the northern mid-latitudes are small. In contrast, remarkably large O3 trends occur at low latitudes and in the Southern Hemisphere, where near-surface O3 has increased by up to a factor of 2. The likely cause is the substantial increase of anthropogenic emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) associated with energy use in Africa, which has added to NOx from biomass burning and natural sources.