During the DEEPWAVE campaign, the NCAR Gulfstream V research aircraft flew over New Zealand, Tasmania, and the Southern Ocean during June and July 2014. During 23 of these flights, we operated a Rayleigh lidar for middle atmosphere temperature measurements from 25-60km, a narrowband, 2-frequency Na lidar for sodium density and/or temperature measurements from ~80-105km, and an Advanced Temperature Mapper for OH nightglow intensity and temperature maps at 87km altitude. This platform allows high resolution horizontal/vertical cross sections of temperature covering most of the region from the surface to the mesopause with up to 10 passes over the mountains during 6-10 hour flights. For many of the flights, the tropospheric winds and flight direction were perpendicular to the mountains. We saw large wave perturbations amplitude in the middle and upper atmosphere during weak to medium forcing for both parallel and perpendicular cases. Conversely, large tropospheric wind events tended to break near the tropopause or in the lower stratosphere possibly producing propagating secondary waves rather than a mountain wave response at higher altitudes. During our last flight on 20 July 2014, the forcing from the southwest and flight track were oriented parallel with the mountain range, producing a strong but more complicated pattern with multiple waves from different terrain features propagating into the mesosphere. This presentation will discuss how the tropospheric wind direction and amplitude affects the structure and strength of the middle and upper atmosphere mountain wave response.

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*email: b.p.williams@gats-inc.com
*Preference: Oral