The wind velocity structure in the upper stratosphere, mesosphere, and lower thermosphere (MLT) is studied with the recently developed method of infrasound probing of the atmosphere. The method is based on the effect of infrasound scattering from highly anisotropic wind velocity and temperature inhomogeneities in the middle and upper atmosphere. The scattered infrasound field propagates in the acoustic shadow zones, where it is detected by microbarometers. The vertical profiles of the wind velocity fluctuations in the upper stratosphere (30–52 km) and MLT (90–140 km) are retrieved from the waveforms and travel times of the infrasound signals generated by explosive sources such as volcanoes and surface explosions. The fine‐scale wind‐layered structure in these layers was poorly observed until present time by other remote sensing methods, including radars and satellites. It is found that the MLT atmospheric layer (90–102 km) can contain extremely high vertical gradients of the wind velocity, up to 10 m/s per 100 m. The effect of a fine‐scale wind velocity structure on the waveforms of infrasound signals is studied. The vertical wave number spectra of the retrieved wind velocity fluctuations are obtained for the upper stratosphere. Despite the difference in the locations of the explosive sources all the obtained spectra show the existence of high vertical wave number spectral tail with a −3 power law decay. The obtained spectral characteristics of the wind fluctuations are necessary for improvement of gravity wave drag parameterizations for numerical weather forecast.
Mesoscale wind speed and temperature fluctuations with periods from 1 min to a few hours significantly affect temporal variability and turbulent regime of the stable atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). Their statistical characteristics are still poorly understood, although the knowledge of such statistics is required when modeling sound propagation through the stable ABL. Several field experiments have been conducted to study the influence of mesoscale wind speed fluctuations on acoustic pulse propagation through the stable ABL. Some results of these experiments are described in this paper. A special acoustic source was used to generate acoustic pulses by the detonation of an air-propane mixture with a repetition period 30 s. The mean wind speed and temperature profiles were continuously measured by Doppler sodar and temperature profiler, whereas mesoscale wind fluctuations were measured by anemometers placed on a 56-m mast. From the measurements of the pulse travel time fluctuations at different distances from the source, the statistical characteristics of the mesoscale wind fluctuations, such as frequency spectra, coherences, horizontal phase speeds and scales, have been obtained. Some of the obtained results are interpreted with the use of a recently developed model for the internal wave spectrum in a stably stratified atmosphere.
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