Investigating Seasonal Mesospheric Gravity Wave Propagation and Variability

Ahmad Talaei* and Mike Taylor, Pierre-Dominique Pautet, Yucheng Zhao, Takashi S. Matsuda, and Takuji Nakamura
Utah State University

It is now well established the Gravity Waves (GW) exhibit major influences on the mesosphere dynamics. In particular, short period waves (< 1 hr.) are ever present and several previous studies have indicated strong preferential wave propagation directions from different sites and during different seasons.

In this study, we report results from a new spectral analysis of short period GW observed by an Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (AMTM) operated at Bear Lake Observatory, Utah, over the last 3 years, from 2013 to date. The AMTM is a high performance infrared imaging system that measures selected emission lines in the mesospheric hydroxyl (OH 3,1 band) emission (nocturnal altitude ~ 87 km) in order to create spectral intensity and temperature maps of the GW fields.

Both the intensity and temperature data have been analyzed separately using a modified method previously developed by Matsuda at el., 2014 to quantify the horizontal phase speed distributions and preferential wave propagations for seasonal and year to year variability using representative months for this mid-latitude site.



*email: ahmad.talaei@gmail.com
*Preference: Poster