On the determination of gravity wave momentum flux from GPS radio occultation data

摘要

Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) is a well-established technique for obtainingglobal gravity wave (GW) information. RO uses GPS signals received by lowEarth-orbiting satellites for atmospheric limb sounding. Temperature profilesare derived with high vertical resolution and provide a global coverage underany weather conditions, offering the possibility of global monitoring of thevertical temperature structure and atmospheric wave parameters. The six-satellite constellation COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 delivers approximately 2000temperature profiles daily. In this study, we use a method to obtain globaldistributions of horizontal gravity wave wavelengths, to be applied in thedetermination of the vertical flux of horizontal momentum transported bygravity waves. Here, a method for the determination of the real horizontalwavelength from three vertical profiles is applied to the COSMIC data.The horizontal and vertical wavelength, the specific potential energy(), and the vertical flux of horizontal momentum (MF) arecalculated and their global distribution is discussed.