Identification

Title

Seasonal and local time variability of ripples from airglow imager observations in US and Japan

Abstract

Ripples as seen in airglow imagers are small wavy structures with short horizontal wavelengths (<15 km). Ripples are thought to form as the result of local instabilities, which are believed to occur when the amplitude of gravity waves becomes large enough. We have investigated ripple formation based on years of airglow imager observations located at Fort Collins, Colorado (41°N, 105°W) and Misato Observatory, Japan (34°N, 135°E)/Shigaraki MU Observatory (35°N, 136°E). Na temperature-wind lidar observations are employed to detect convective and dynamic instabilities in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region over Fort Collins, Colorado. Seasonal variation of the ripple occurrence in Colorado is compared to that of the lidar-measured instability. The occurrence frequency of ripples varies semiannually, with maxima occurring during solstices and minima during equinoxes in both Colorado and Japan. However, the probability of convective and dynamic instabilities varies annually with a peak in Colorado winter. The seasonal variation of the occurrence frequency of ripples correlates with that of the gravity wave variances in the MLT. Ripple occurrence over Colorado also shows strong local time dependence, but it bears little resemblance to the local time dependence of instability probability.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7ns0w5z

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2010-07-02T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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Conformity

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact