[1] A function that approximates atmospheric tidal behavior in the polar regions is described. This function is fitted to multistation radar measurements of wind in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere with the aim of obtaining a latitude-longitude-height description of the variation of tides over the whole Antarctic continent. Archival wind data sets are combined with present-day ones to fill the spatial distribution of the observations and to reduce the potential effects of spatial aliasing. Multiple years are combined through the compilation of monthly station composite days, yielding results for each month of the year. Despite potential problems associated with year-to-year variations in the tidal phase, a useful climatology of Antarctic zonal and meridional tidal wind components is compiled. The results of the fits reproduce the major features of the high-latitude tidal wind field: the dominance of the semidiurnal migrating mode in the winter months and the presence of a semidiurnal zonal wave number one component in the summer months. It is also found that the summer semidiurnal tide contains a zonal wave number zero component.

An unprecedented major stratospheric warming occurred in the Antarctic winter of 2002. We present measurements of winds in the mesosphere‐lower thermosphere (MLT) made with MF radars located at Davis (69°S, 78°E), Syowa (69°S, 40°E) and Rothera (68°S, 68°W). The mesospheric wind field in 2002 was found to be considerably different to other years due to increased planetary wave activity throughout the winter. Zonal winds were weaker than usual during the 2002 winter and also during the transition to the summer circulation. The MLT zonal winds showed a reversal about one week earlier than the stratospheric reversal associated with the warming. Meridional winds showed oscillations consistent with the presence of traveling wave‐1 planetary waves with periods ∼14 days. The results are compared with similar mesospheric observations made during northern hemisphere stratospheric warmings. Some similarities between hemispheres were found, notably that the reversal in the mesospheric winds precedes the warming events.

We have developed a new analysis method for obtaining the power spectrum in the horizontal phase velocity domain from airglow intensity image data to study atmospheric gravity waves. This method can deal with extensive amounts of imaging data obtained on different years and at various observation sites without bias caused by different event extraction criteria for the person processing the data. The new method was applied to sodium airglow data obtained in 2011 at Syowa Station (69°S, 40°E), Antarctica. The results were compared with those obtained from a conventional event analysis in which the phase fronts were traced manually in order to estimate horizontal characteristics, such as wavelengths, phase velocities, and wave periods. The horizontal phase velocity of each wave event in the airglow images corresponded closely to a peak in the spectrum. The statistical results of spectral analysis showed an eastward offset of the horizontal phase velocity distribution. This could be interpreted as the existence of wave sources around the stratospheric eastward jet. Similar zonal anisotropy was also seen in the horizontal phase velocity distribution of the gravity waves by the event analysis. Both methods produce similar statistical results about directionality of atmospheric gravity waves. Galactic contamination of the spectrum was examined by calculating the apparent velocity of the stars and found to be limited for phase speeds lower than 30 m/s. In conclusion, our new method is suitable for deriving the horizontal phase velocity characteristics of atmospheric gravity waves from an extensive amount of imaging data.

Mean wind and gravity wave climatologies are presented for the polar mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT). The data were derived using MF radars at Davis (69°S, 78°E) and Syowa (69°S, 40°E) in the Antarctic and Poker Flat (65°N, 147°W) and Andenes (69°N, 16°E) in the Arctic. The dynamics of the Antarctic MLT are found to be significantly different from the Arctic MLT. Summer maxima in both the westward and equatorward winds occur closer to the solstice in the Antarctic than in the Arctic. The greater symmetry around the solstice suggests radiative effects may play a greater role in controlling the state of the Antarctic MLT than in the Arctic, where dynamical effects appear to be more important. Gravity wave observations also suggest that wave drag may be greater in the Arctic than in the Antarctic. The equatorward flow near the mesopause persists later in summer in the Arctic than in the Antarctic, as do observations of polar mesospheric clouds and polar mesospheric summer echoes. All three phenomena begin at about the same time in each hemisphere, but end later in the Arctic than in the Antarctic. It is proposed that the magnitude of the meridional winds can be used as a proxy for gravity wave driving and the consequent adiabatic cooling in the MLT. Seasonal variations in gravity wave activity are predominately combinations of annual and semiannual components. Significant hemispheric differences are observed for both the timing and magnitude of these seasonal variations.

We present the first horizontal divergence and relative vorticity measurements at polar mesospheric altitudes measured from the ground. Our technique relies on combining information from two specular meteor radars (SMRs) separated 130 km at polar latitudes, specifically, the Andenes and Tromsø radars in northern Norway. The resulting values are obtained over a region that spans an approximate area of 400 km diameter at mesospheric altitudes. The temporal and vertical resolution are 1 h and 2 km in altitude. The technique not only allows to obtain the gradient terms of the horizontal wind, that in turn are used to derive the horizontal divergence and relative vorticity, but also improves the horizontal sampling compared to single SMRs. Synthetic data are used to qualitatively test the technique and identify potential sources of biases on the resulting measurements. For example, we have found that an apparent large mean vertical velocity is obtained, after averaging many days, if there is a persistent divergent field. We present a climatology of the resulting wind field parameters from 12 years of continuous observations and focus on the summer results. We found a persistent altitudinal pattern in both the horizontal divergence and relative vorticity fields during all northern hemispheric summers. The horizontal divergence is mainly positive decreasing in magnitude below ∼86 km, and the relative vorticity is negative/positive below/above ∼88 km over northern Norway.

Upper mesospheric winds observed by the Svalbard specular meteor radar (16.01°E,78.16°N) are analyzed to study the tidal variabilities during the 2009 sudden stratospheric warming (SSW). We report a textbook case of nonlinear interactions between planetary waves (PWs) and the SW2 tide (SWm denotes semidiurnal westward propagating tidal mode with zonal wave number m). The Lomb‐Scargle algorithm, bispectrum, wavelet spectra, and Manley‐Rowe relations are combined to explore the frequency match, phase coherence, energy budget, and wave number relations among the interacting waves and their temporal evolution. Our results suggest that (1) 5, 10, 16 day PW normal modes interact with SW2 generating significant sidebands (S2Ss) at frequencies lower and higher than SW2, known as SW1 and SW3 enhancements, respectively; (2) SW2 is the main energy supplier for both SW1 and SW3, hence shrinks in the interactions; (3) whereas the PWs export relatively negligible energy to SW3 but accept energy from SW2 in generating SW1, therefore, the PWs is not subject to the interactions but controlled by external dynamics, which might in turn act as a key in switching on/off the SW1 and SW3 interactions independently; (4) the SW1 enhancement could be explained as a byproduct of the planetary wave amplification by stimulated tidal decay (PASTIDE); (5) PASTIDE contributes energy to the secondary PW in the late SSW stage reported in previous studies; and (6) one SW1 component associated with the 16 day PW is very close to the semidiurnal lunar mode in frequency, which might contaminate the estimation of the lunar tidal amplification in previous studies.

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