A nonlinear, compressible, spectral collocation code is employed to examine gravity wave breaking in two and three spatial dimensions. Two‐dimensional results exhibit a structure consistent with previous efforts and suggest wave instability occurs via convective rolls aligned normal to the gravity wave motion (uniform in the spanwise direction). Three‐dimensional results demonstrate, in contrast, that the preferred mode of instability is a series of counterrotating vortices oriented along the gravity wave motion, elongated in the streamwise direction, and confined to the region of convective instability within the wave field. Comparison of the two‐dimensional results (averaged spanwise) for both two‐ and three‐dimensional simulations reveals that vortex generation contributes to much more rapid wave field evolution and decay, with rapid restoration of near‐adiabatic lapse rates and stronger constraints on wave energy and momentum fluxes. These results also demonstrate that two‐dimensional models are unable to describe properly the physics or the consequences of the wave breaking process, at least for the flow parameters examined in this study. The evolution and structure of the three‐dimensional instability, its influences on the gravity wave field, and the subsequent transition to quasi‐isotropic small‐scale motions are the subjects of companion papers by Fritts et al. (this issue) and Isler et al. (this issue).

A companion paper by Andreassen et al. (this issue) introduced and used a nonlinear, compressible, spectral collocation code to address the relative evolutions of two‐dimensional motions obtained in two‐ and three‐dimensional simulations of gravity wave breaking. That study illustrated the effects of instability on the wave field and mean flow evolution and suggested that two‐dimensional models are unable to fully describe the physics of the wave breaking process. The present paper examines in detail the structure, evolution, and energetics of the three‐dimensional motions accounting for wave instability as well as their associated transports of momentum and heat. It is found that this instability comprises counterrotating vortices which evolve very rapidly within the convectively unstable region of a breaking wave. Instability scales are selected based on wave geometry and vortices are elongated in the streamwise direction (horizontal wavenumber in the spanwise direction) and result in the rapid collapse of superadiabatic regions within the wave field. The resulting spectra show clearly the transition from gravity wave forcing of harmonics of the incident wave to instability onset and evolution. Fluxes of momentum and heat by the instability reveal the manner in which the gravity wave amplitude is constrained and the influences of instability on the wave transports of these quantities. The breakdown of the instability structure and its evolution toward isotropic small‐scale structure is the subject of the companion paper by Isler et al. (this issue).

Results of a recent modeling study of gravity wave breaking in three dimensions by Andreassen et al. and Fritts et al. showed wave saturation to occur via a three‐dimensional instability oriented normal to the direction of wave propagation. The instability was found to occur at horizontal scales comparable to the depth of unstable regions within the wave field and to lead to substantial vertical displacements and tilting of isentropic surfaces. Because of strong similarities between the wave and instability structures in the simulation and the structure observed in noctilucent cloud layers near the summer mesopause, we have used these model results to compute the advective effects on cloud visibility and structure for a range of viewing angles and cloud layer widths. Our results show the gravity wave breaking signature to provide a plausible explanation of the observed structures and suggest that noctilucent cloud structures may be used in turn to infer qualitative properties of gravity wave scales, energy and momentum transports, and turbulence scales near the summer mesopause.

Instabilities and turbulence extending to the smallest dynamical scales play important roles in the deposition of energy and momentum by gravity waves throughout the atmosphere. However, these dynamics and their effects have been impossible to quantify to date due to lack of observational guidance. Serendipitous optical images of polar mesospheric clouds at ∼82 km obtained by star cameras aboard a cosmology experiment deployed on a stratospheric balloon provide a new observational tool, revealing instability and turbulence structures extending to spatial scales < 20 m. At 82 km, this resolution provides sensitivity extending to the smallest turbulence scale not strongly influenced by viscosity: the "inner scale" of turbulence, l0 ∼10(ν 3 / ) 1/4 . Such images represent a new window into small-scale dynamics that occur throughout the atmosphere but are impossible to observe in such detail at any other altitude. We present a sample of images revealing a range of dynamics features, and employ numerical simulations that resolve these dynamics to guide our interpretation of several observed events.

Abstract.Measurements of atmospheric structure and dynamics near the mesopause were performed using a sodium lidar, an MF radar, and a nightglow CCD camera during the CORN campaign performed in central Illinois during September 1992. The major features of the observed structure on September 27/28 include a low-frequency, large-scale wave accounting for persistent overturning of the temperature and sodium density fields, superposed higher-frequency motions, smallscale transient ripples in the nightglow images suggestive of instability structures, and large-scale wind shear near the height of apparent instability. We describe four simulations of wave breaking with a three-dimensional model designed to assist in the interpretation of these observations. Two simulations address the instability of a low-frequency wave in a background shear flow with and without higher-frequency modulation. These show higher-frequency motions to be important in assigning the spatial and temporal scales of instability structures. Two other simulations examine the instabilities accompanying a convectively unstable inertia-gravity wave with and without higher-frequency modulation without mean shear. These show the instability structure to remain aligned in the direction of wave propagation, with only weak influences by the high-frequency motion. Our results suggest that instability due to a superposition of waves accounts best for the nightglow features observed during the CORN campaign and that streamwise convective instabilities observed due to wave breaking at higher intrinsic frequencies continue to dominate instability structure for internal waves for which inertial effects are important.