SA13B-3999:
Gravity Wave Source Characteristics over South Pole
Monday, 15 December 2014
Dhvanit Mehta, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Edison, NJ, United States, Andrew J Gerrard, New Jersey Institute of Techno, Bridgewater, NJ, United States, Yusuke Ebihara, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan and Allan T Weatherwax, Siena College, Physics, Loudonville, NY, United States
Abstract:
While a large body of work exists on the characteristics of gravity waves in the Mesosphere-Lower Thermosphere (MLT) region, comparatively few investigations have looked into the particulars of wave sources tied directly to observations. Past studies, such as Brown et al. [2004], have used a combination of gravity wave observations from all-sky imager data and ray-tracing techniques to study energy transport into the MLT by gravity waves arising from tropospheric sources. In the interest of furthering our understanding of the role gravity waves play in the polar MLT, we have applied those techniques to a large set of all-sky data obtained during the 2013 polar winter from an imager located at South Pole Station, Antarctica. Gravity waves are identified, and their horizontal and temporal characteristics are determined. These are then used as input parameters into the FOREGRATS ray-tracing model to determine possible wave sources outside of the polar MLT. We present the results of this work here.
