Submitting Campus
Daytona Beach
Department
Physical Sciences
Document Type
Article
Publication/Presentation Date
6-3-2017
Abstract/Description
Turbulence is ubiquitous in the mesopause region, where the atmospheric stability is low and wave breaking is frequent. Measuring turbulence is challenging in this region and is traditionally done by rocket soundings and radars. In this work, we show for the first time that the modern Na wind/temperature lidar located at Andes Lidar Observatory in Cerro Pachón, Chile, is able to directly measure the turbulence perturbations in temperature and vertical wind between 85 and 100 km. Using 150 h of lidar observations, we derived the frequency (ω) and vertical wave number (m) spectra for both gravity wave and turbulence, which follow the power law with slopes consistent with theoretical models. The eddy heat flux generally decreases with altitude from about −0.5 Km s−1 at 85 km to −0.1 Km s−1 at 100 km, with a local maximum of −0.6 Km s−1 at 93 km. The derived mean turbulence thermal diffusivity and energy dissipation rate are 43 m2 s−1 and 37 mW kg−1, respectively. The mean net cooling resulted from the heat transport and energy dissipation is −4.9 ± 1.5 K d−1, comparable to that due to gravity wave transport at −7.9 ± 1.9 K d−1. Turbulence key parameters show consistency with turbulence theories.
Publication Title
Geophys. Res. Lett.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL073807
Grant or Award Name
NSF grants AGS-1136278, AGS-1136208, AGS-1115725, AGS-1110199 and AGS-1115249, NSF Major Research Instrument grant AGS-1229085, National Natural Science Foundation of China grant 41274154
Scholarly Commons Citation
Guo, Y., A. Z. Liu, and C. S. Gardner (2017), First Na lidar measurements of turbulence heat flux, thermal diffusivity, and energy dissipation rate in the mesopause region, Geophys. Res. Lett., 44, 5782–5790, doi:10.1002/2017GL073807