The saturation of gravity waves in the middle atmosphere. Part IV: cutoff of the incident wave spectrum

Abstract

The present paper derives an analytic form for the cutoff function, illustrates it in application, and provides quantitative support for a value possibly as low as 0.5 in the stratosphere and a value possibly as high as 1.0 in the mesosphere. In addition, it slightly recasts the heuristic approach to the Doppler-spread analysis, and it admits to certain difficulties, associated with the largest-m waves, whose circumvention appears to require a far more detailed analysis of wave-wave interaction through the advective nonlinearity. -from Author