| Summary: | The research objective is to utilize a suite of instruments, including an airglow imager, to investigate short-period gravity waves in the Arctic atmosphere over Alaska. Short-period gravity waves are an important component of the larger atmospheric circulation as these waves are believed to transport a large amount of vertical moment flux into the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region. While the propagation nature and sources of these waves have been studied extensively at low- and mid-latitudes, little is known about their behavior at high latitudes. Recent efforts have begun to characterize the waves over the Antarctic continent, while the project proposed here will focus on the Arctic. Specifically, the proposed research will establish a long-term winter time series of short-period gravity waves in the Arctic, including their dominant source regions, and influences of large-scale tidal and planetary wave motion. The co-located Rayleigh LIDAR will provide essential high vertical resolution temperature measurements to help elucidate the vertical wave propagation, individual wave contribution to the Eliassen-Palm (EP) flux, and coupling between the lower and upper atmosphere during stratospheric warming events.
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