Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) is a well-established technique for obtaining global gravity wave (GW) information. RO uses GPS signals received by low Earth-orbiting satellites for atmospheric limb sounding. Temperature profiles are derived with high vertical resolution and provide a global coverage under any weather conditions, offering the possibility of global monitoring of the vertical temperature structure and atmospheric wave parameters. The six-satellite constellation COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 delivers approximately 2000 temperature profiles daily. In this study, we use a method to obtain global distributions of horizontal gravity wave wavelengths, to be applied in the determination of the vertical flux of horizontal momentum transported by gravity waves. Here, a method for the determination of the real horizontal wavelength from three vertical profiles is applied to the COSMIC data. The horizontal and vertical wavelength, the specific potential energy ( E p), and the vertical flux of horizontal momentum (MF) are calculated and their global distribution is discussed. © 2013 Author(s).
CITATION STYLE
Faber, A., Llamedo, P., Schmidt, T., De La Torre, A., & Wickert, J. (2013). On the determination of gravity wave momentum flux from GPS radio occultation data. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 6(11), 3169–3180. https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-6-3169-2013
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