The quasi 16-day wave in mesospheric water vapor during boreal winter 2011/2012

Abstract

Abstract. This study investigates the characteristics of the quasi 16-day wave in the mesosphere during boreal winter 2011/2012 using observations of water vapor from ground-based microwave radiometers and satellite data. The ground-based microwave radiometers are located in Seoul (South Korea, 37° N), Bern (Switzerland, 47° N) and Sodankylä (Finland, 67° N). The quasi 16-day wave is observed in the mesosphere at all three locations, while the dominant period increases with latitude from 15 days at Seoul to 20 days at Sodankylä. The observed evolution of the quasi 16-day wave confirms that the wave activity is strongly decreased during a sudden stratospheric warming that occurred in mid-January 2012. Using satellite data from the Microwave Limb Sounder on the Aura satellite, we examine the zonal characteristics of the quasi 16-day wave and conclude that the observed waves above the mid-latitudinal stations Seoul and Bern are eastward-propagating s=−1 planetary waves with periods of 15 to 16 days, while the observed oscillation above the polar station Sodankylä is a standing oscillation with a period of approximately 20 days. The strongest relative wave amplitudes in water vapor during the investigated time period are approximately 15%. The wave activity varies strongly along a latitude circle. The activity of the quasi 16-day wave in mesospheric water vapor during boreal winter 2011/2012 is strongest over Northern Europe, the North Atlantic ocean and North-West Canada. The region of highest wave activity seems to be related to the position of the polar vortex. We conclude that the classic approach to characterize planetary waves zonally averaged along a latitude circle is not sufficient to explain the local observations because of the strong longitudinal dependence of the wave activity.

A Statistical Analysis of the Propagating Quasi 16‐Day Waves at High Latitudes and Their Response to Sudden Stratospheric Warmings From 2005 to 2018

“…In recent years, studies on the correlation between SSWs and the quasi 16‐day wave have attracted more and more attention (Laskar et al, ; Pancheva et al, ; Scheiben et al, ; Vineeth et al, ). However, as mentioned in section , most of these studies are based on a single SSW event.…”

“…Their study revealed that the quasi 16‐day wave is enhanced in the equatorial mesopause temperature prior to the SSW and indicated that the quasi 16‐day wave can propagate from the equatorial stratosphere to the North Pole in about 1 month. Scheiben et al () investigated the characteristics of the quasi 16‐day wave in the mesosphere during boreal winter 2011/2012 using ground‐based microwave radiometer and satellite water vapor observations. They found decreased quasi 16‐day wave activity during the 2012 SSW.…”

Quasi 18 h wave activity in ground-based observed mesospheric H<sub>2</sub>O over Bern, Switzerland

“…In Studer et al (2012) the numerical structure of the band-pass filter was shown. Lately the filter has been used to investigate the impact of the 27-day solar rotation cycle on mesospheric water vapor (Lainer et al, 2016) and to analyze the quasi 16-day planetary wave during boreal winter (Scheiben et al, 2014). We follow the advice from Oppenheim et al (1989) and run the filter with a zero phase lag forward and backward along the measurement time series.…”

“…Investigations of the quasi 2-day wave are found for instance in studies by Salby (1981a), Rodgers and Prata (1981) and Yue et al (2012), and more recently by Tschanz and Kämpfer (2015), who analyzed the 2-day wave signatures in Arctic middle-atmospheric water vapor measurements in conjunction with the occurrence of sudden stratospheric warmings. Characteristics of the 5-day wave were analyzed by Rosenlof and Thomas (1990), Wu et al (1994), Riggin et al (2006) and Belova et al (2008), and waves with even longer periods have been observed in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (Forbes et al, 1995;McDonald et al, 2011;Scheiben et al, 2014;Rüfenacht et al, 2016).…”

Long-term observation of midlatitude quasi 2-day waves by a water vapor radiometer

“…In the mesosphere H 2 O is photochemically stable for weeks (Brasseur and Solomon, 2006) and this circumstance is used to investigate middle atmospheric wave dynamics from ground-based observations (Scheiben et al, 2014;Tschanz and Kämpfer, 2015;Lainer et al, 2016Lainer et al, , 2017. In this study we present quite continuous observations of the Q2DW signature in middle atmospheric water vapor for 7 years (84 months) by the middle atmospheric water vapor radiometer MIAWARA at 7.46 • E).…”