Identification

Title

Simulation of the propagation and effects of gravity waves generated by Tonga volcano eruption in the thermosphere and ionosphere using nested‐grid TIEGCM

Abstract

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption on 15 January 2022 triggered strong atmospheric gravity wave (GW) activity in the upper atmosphere, which was later detected by various observations. We perform one of the first ionosphere-thermosphere (I-T) model studies of the GW effects from the Tonga eruption in the ionosphere-thermosphereI-T system using the thermosphere-ionosphere-electrodynamics general circulation model (TIEGCM). We implement a high-resolution mesh inside a regional domain (nested grid) in addition to the global low-resolution mesh, which differs from the standard global uniform resolution setup. The nested-grid TIEGCM (TIEGCM-NG) successfully simulates the observed wave propagation and effects in the I-T system by further nudging GW fields at TIEGCM lower boundaries (similar to 97 km) using output from the high-resolution whole atmosphere community climate model with thermosphere and ionosphere extension simulations. The simulation results indicate that the critical parameter to simulate GW propagation is horizontal resolution. Inside the high-resolution nested region, GWs with horizontal wavelengths of similar to 400 km and periods of 10-30 min can propagate outward and upward and produce significant ionospheric disturbances close to observations. Outside the nested region, only long-wavelength, low-frequency waves survive. Another test indicates that GWs can be better resolved when geopotential height is nudged at TIEGCM lower boundaries. With the capability of simultaneously simulating local, small to mesoscale I-T processes, TIEGCM-NG is superior to global high-resolution simulations due to its largely reduced computation cost and may find its application in the study of I-T system regional dynamics.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d71g0r7h

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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code identifying the spatial reference system

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Topic category

geoscientificInformation

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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date type

publication

effective date

2023-04-01T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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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

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pointOfContact

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