The present study for the first time reports the global gravity wave activity in terms of their potential energy derived from TIMED/SABER observations right from the stratosphere to the mesosphere lower thermosphere (MLT) region. The potential energy profiles obtained from SABER temperature are validated by comparing them with ground based LIDAR observations over a low latitude site, Gadanki (13.5°N, 79.2°E). The stratospheric and mesospheric global maps of gravity wave energy showed pronounced maxima over high and polar latitudes of the winter hemisphere. The interannual variability of the stratospheric gravity wave activity exhibited prominent annual oscillation over mid-latitudes. The equatorial gravity wave activity exhibited quasi-biennial oscillation in the lower stratosphere and semi-annual oscillation in the upper stratosphere. The MLT region maps revealed summer hemispheric maxima over polar latitudes and secondary maxima over the equatorial region. The results are discussed in the light of present understanding of global gravity wave observations. The significance of the present study lies in emphasizing the importance of satellite measurements in elucidating gravity waves, which is envisaged to have profound impact on parameterizing these waves.

[1] Analysis of the continuous and collocated measurements of columnar spectral aerosol optical depths (AODs) and mass size distributions in the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) over the Bay of Bengal (BoB), carried out from 27 December 2008 to 29 January 2009 during the Winter Integrated Campaign for Aerosols, Gases and Radiation Budget (W-ICARB), revealed distinct regional features in the spatial variations of the aerosol properties in the MABL and column. In general, AODs were high over the northern and northwestern parts of the BoB, with pockets of very high values, within which the AODs were as high as ∼0.8 while the smallest values (∼0.1) were observed over the northeastern BoB, off the Myanmar and Bangladesh coasts. Interestingly, though, this region had the highest Angstrom wavelength exponent a (∼1.5), notwithstanding the generally high values that prevailed over the eastern as well as northern coastal regions of India. Back trajectory analyses revealed the significant role of the advected aerosols in the observed spatial pattern. Within the MABL, high accumulation mode mass concentrations (M A ) prevailed over the entire BoB with the accumulation fraction ranging from 0.6 to 0.95, whereas very high fine-mode (r < 0.1 mm) aerosol mass fractions (∼0.8) were observed over the northeastern and western coastal BoB adjoining the Indian mainland (where a was high to very high). The vertical distributions, inferred from the columnar and MABL properties as well as from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations data, revealed better homogeneity in the northeastern and eastern BoB, whereas significant heterogeneity was seen over other regions.

The disparities in satellite‐based observations of global gravity wave activity are discussed in terms of methods used to extract the gravity wave perturbations from background and the sensitivity of the given satellite to the gravity wave spectrum. The temperature measurements from TIMED/SABER are used to obtain the global gravity wave maps in terms of their potential energies by employing two widely used methods to extract the gravity wave perturbations viz. (1) removal of 0–6 zonal wavenumber large‐scale waves and (2) high pass filter with cut‐off vertical wavelength at 10 km. The present study for the first time employed these two different methods on the same satellite observations to investigate the sensitivity of global gravity wave patterns and their magnitudes to the methods used to extract them. The results showed significant differences in the gravity wave potential energy magnitudes estimated by employing these two methods. Further, employing the first method on COSMIC‐measured temperature profiles, the global gravity wave pattern is estimated and the same is compared with that obtained using SABER observations. This comparison substantiated the assertion that using the same method to extract the gravity wave perturbations from different satellite observations yields the similar global gravity wave pattern. The present study thus provided very useful insights into the observed discrepancies among current global gravity wave patterns and it is envisaged that this is a step forward in unifying the existing methods to extract gravity wave parameters using space‐based observations.

No abstract

Abstract. Measurements of atmospheric temperature profiles in the troposphere and lower stratosphere were made over Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) (8.5 • N, 76.9 • E) during a partial solar eclipse (22 July 2009) and an annular solar eclipse (15 January 2010). It was observed that during the partial solar eclipse, the temperature decreased by 2-3 • C in the vicinity of the tropopause and in the lower stratosphere the temperature increased by ∼2.6 • C during the maximum phase of the partial solar eclipse. During the annular solar eclipse, a temperature reduction of ∼2 • C was observed around the tropopause. This study also revealed a feature of delayed effect in the form of a very intense warming of ∼8 • C at 18 km after about 4 h of the annular solar eclipse. The Cold-Point Tropopause (CPT) temperature increased slowly before the beginning of the eclipse (up to 10:00 IST) and during the maximum phase of the eclipse, the difference in CPT temperature and height was −3.5 • C and ∼110 m, respectively, as that of the control day. After the four hours of the eclipse, the CPT height had decreased by ∼1.7 km and the CPT temperature increased by ∼4.6 • C. This is for the first time that the diurnal variation of the tropopause has been reported during a solar eclipse day. The present study, thus, provided an opportunity to investigate the temperature perturbations in the troposphere and lower stratosphere during a partial and annular solar eclipse. The highlight of the present results are (1) cooling of the entire troposphere and lower stratosphere during the maximum phase of annular solar eclipse, (2) an intense heating of the lower stratosphere by 8 • C after nearly four hours from the maximum phase of the annular eclipse, and (3) drastic variations in the diurnal evolution of the tropical tropopause characteristics. The cooling effect is attributed to the radiative response of the atmosphere to the solar eclipse, where as heatCorrespondence to: K. V. Subrahmanyam (kvsm2k@gmail.com) ing is attributed to the dynamical response of the atmosphere to the solar eclipse. These results may have important implications in understanding the response of the atmosphere to the radiative, as well as dynamical, perturbations caused by any celestial or terrestrial disturbances.