A new theory of the saturated gravity wave spectrum of the middle atmosphere

Abstract

The theory is based on a hypothesis that the saturated spectrum is a result of balance among various spectral sources and sinks of gravity waves in the middle atmosphere. The spectral source included in this paper is the amplification of upward propagating gravity waves due to the density effect. Two spectral sinks are the off-resonant wave-wave interactions and scale-dependent radiative damping. -from Author