AGS-PRF: Gravity Wave Multi-Scale Interactions and Measurements

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Gravity waves (GWs) play important roles in Earth's weather and climate due to their impact on the mean winds throughout the atmosphere. Smaller-scale GWs with large amplitudes likely play a major role in these overall dynamics, but currently very little is known about their statistics and influences. Additionally, these GWs are essentially unresolved and not accounted for in large-scale models. This proposed research will address these science questions, which represent a significant need within the Aeronomy community. For this purpose the PI will utilize combined measurements from the Advanced Mesosphere Temperature Mappers (AMTMs), resonance lidars, and radars located at the Arctic Lidar Observatory for Middle Atmospheric Research (ALOMAR), at Bear Lake Observatory (BLO) in Logan, UT, and these instruments deployed together during the recent DEEPWAVE airborne and ground-based field measurement program at New Zealand. These earlier correlative measurement capabilities, funded by NSF, have demonstrated an excellent potential to quantify GW momentum fluxes, and the GW characteristics that account for these fluxes, to a degree not possible with traditional airglow imager or wind profiling radars or lidars.This research will result in quantification of multiple cases of multi-scale MLT dynamics that advance the understanding of their various effects. These analyses will also be used to guide numerical studies of these dynamics to further quantify their influences and aid efforts to parameterize such dynamics in large-scale models. This research will foster beneficial collaborations between the MLT measurement and modeling communities, as well as provide an opportunity for collaboration on GW coupling between different areas of the atmosphere from the troposphere up through the MLT region. Since multi-scale dynamics also occur throughout the atmosphere and oceans, and likely in other planetary atmospheres, this research would benefit efforts to understand key GW roles in all of these fluid systems. The research will be carried out under the mentorship of Dr. Dave Fritts at GATS, inc., Boulder. Additionally, the PI will continue to mentor undergraduate students from the nearby University of Colorado, providing opportunities for new students to learn more about atmospheric science.