TY - JOUR

T1 - A case study of long gravity wave crests in noctilucent clouds and their origin in the upper tropospheric jet stream

AU - Dalin, P.

AU - Gavrilov, N.

AU - Pertsev, N.

AU - Perminov, V.

AU - Pogoreltsev, A.

AU - Shevchuk, N.

AU - Dubietis, A.

AU - Völger, P.

AU - Zalcik, M.

AU - Ling, A.

AU - Kulikov, S.

AU - Zadorozhny, A.

AU - Salakhutdinov, G.

AU - Grigoryeva, I.

N1 - Funding Information: The work was partly supported by the Russian Scientific Foundation under contract 14-17-00685 in terms of model simulations as well as by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under project 15-05-04975a. The authors thank the TIMED/SABER team and M.G. Mlynczak and J.M. Russell for providing the SABER temperature data. The authors are grateful to Andrey Reshetnikov and Alexander Dalin for their support in maintaining the NLC camera located in Lobnya. Users can access the data from the paper via the author: Peter Dalin (e-mail: pdalin@irf.se). Publisher Copyright: © 2016. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. Copyright: Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2016/12/16

Y1 - 2016/12/16

N2 - Atmospheric gravity waves with very long crests (of 450-500 km length) and short horizontal wavelengths of about 20 km were observed in noctilucent clouds and were studied in detail for the first time. The gravity waves were slowly moving in opposite direction to the background wind indicating their forced generation outside the mesopause region. A ray-tracing analysis using meteorological reanalysis and empirical atmospheric model data shows that a source of such peculiar gravity waves observed in noctilucent clouds was located near the tropopause and could be associated with the jet stream at altitudes 8-10 km. Two considered examples of very long wave crests confirm a significant role of the upper tropospheric jet stream as a source of gravity waves and reveal that these waves could propagate without critical levels to the mesopause in summertime.

AB - Atmospheric gravity waves with very long crests (of 450-500 km length) and short horizontal wavelengths of about 20 km were observed in noctilucent clouds and were studied in detail for the first time. The gravity waves were slowly moving in opposite direction to the background wind indicating their forced generation outside the mesopause region. A ray-tracing analysis using meteorological reanalysis and empirical atmospheric model data shows that a source of such peculiar gravity waves observed in noctilucent clouds was located near the tropopause and could be associated with the jet stream at altitudes 8-10 km. Two considered examples of very long wave crests confirm a significant role of the upper tropospheric jet stream as a source of gravity waves and reveal that these waves could propagate without critical levels to the mesopause in summertime.

KW - Upper atmosphere

KW - noctilucent clouds

KW - gravity waves

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85006409684&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/2016JD025422

DO - 10.1002/2016JD025422

M3 - Article

VL - 121

SP - 14,102-14,116

JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

SN - 0148-0227

IS - 23

ER -