Suomi NPP VIIRS/DNB imagery of nightglow gravity waves from various sources over China

Observation of atmospheric gravity waves provides critical insight to weather and climate researches. Some gravity waves survive middle-atmospheric filtering as they propagate upward to the mesopause region and disturb the nightglow emission layer near 90km AMSL, making the waves visible to both gro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAdvances in space research Vol. 59; no. 8; pp. 1951 - 1961
Main Authors Lai, Chang, Yue, Jia, Xu, Jiyao, Straka, William C., Miller, Steven D., Liu, Xiao
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 15.04.2017
Subjects
Convection
Day/Night band
Gravity waves
Jets and fronts
Mountain waves
Jets and fronts
Day/Night band
Mountain waves
Gravity waves
Convection
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Summary:Observation of atmospheric gravity waves provides critical insight to weather and climate researches. Some gravity waves survive middle-atmospheric filtering as they propagate upward to the mesopause region and disturb the nightglow emission layer near 90km AMSL, making the waves visible to both ground and space sensors. Based on the high-resolution images obtained by Day/Night Band on NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership environmental satellite, four representative gravity wave events over China are analyzed. With the help of VIIRS thermal infrared brightness temperature and MERRA wind data, we surmise that these waves originated from orography, thunderstorm, typhoon and baroclinic, respectively. Nadir viewing satellite observations cover a wide area and unlike the surface-based perspective, do not suffer from cloud obscuration. These new observations over remote areas provide important guidance for future deployment of ground based camera systems in China.
ISSN:0273-1177
1879-1948
DOI:10.1016/j.asr.2017.01.041