Investigating Seasonal Gravity Wave Activity in the Summer Polar Mesosphere

Abstract:

The NASA Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite is the first satellite mission dedicated to studying polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs). In particular, the Cloud Imaging and Particle Size (CIPS) instrument onboard AIM obtains large-field PMC images enabling a unique investigation of the mesospheric gravity waves, as the satellite traverses over the summer polar regions. The high quality of CIPS data has provided an exceptional capability to investigate the gravity wave signatures in the summer polar mesosphere where previous measurements have been sparse. We have utilized 12 consecutive seasons of AIM/CIPS PMC albedo data to derive the statistical properties of a broad spectrum of gravity waves present in the PMC data. Over 60,000 waves with horizontal scale sizes ranging from ~50 to >2000 km were identified and measured, revealing a well-developed, consistent distribution for their horizontal wavelengths with a peak in occurrence frequency centered around 400 km. The same result was found from season to season and in both hemispheres. Throughout this study, the wave activity in the southern hemisphere was found to be 10-15% higher than in the northern hemisphere and both northern and southern wave activity was found to decrease systematically (average ~15%) during the course of each summer season. We present new results of the intra-seasonal, inter-annual and hemispheric variability of these waves observed over the whole summer polar cap regions. The systematic decrease in wave activity is consistent with background wind filtering in the northern hemisphere but is not apparently associated with the critical level filtering in the southern hemisphere.