Identification

Title

Evidence of a gravity wave breaking event and the estimation of the wave characteristics from sodium lidar observation over Fort Collins, CO (41°N, 105°W)

Abstract

On the night of December 3rd, 2004 (UT day 338), we observed a significant acceleration of horizontal wind near 100 km between 0900 and 0915 UT accompanied by a temperature cooling at the same altitude and warming below it. The Lomb spectrum analysis of the raw dataset revealed that a gravity wave with 1.5 hr period was significant between 0500 and 0900 UT, but blurred after 0900 UT, suggesting the transfer of wave energy and momentum from wave field to mean flow. Most likely, this observed phenomenon is due to the breaking of an upward propagating gravity wave with an apparent period of ∼1.5 hr. Using linear saturation theory and assuming a monochromatic wave packet, we estimated the characteristics of breaking gravity wave, eddy diffusion coefficient, and a simple relation between Prandtl number and turbulence localization measure when the wave is breaking, from the experimentally determined heating rate, horizontal wind acceleration, and background temperature and winds.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7nc61w5

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

2007-03-10T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

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