Stratospheric gravity waves over the mountainous island of South Georgia: testing a high-resolution dynamical model with 3-D satellite observations and radiosondes

Hindley, Neil P.; Wright, Corwin J.; Gadian, Alan M.; Hoffmann, Lars; Hughes, John K.; Jackson, David R.; King, John C.; Mitchell, Nicholas J.; Moffat-Griffin, Tracy; Moss, Andrew C.; Vosper, Simon B.; Ross, Andrew N.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7695-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7695-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7695-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 10

Research article

|

20 May 2021

Research article |

| 20 May 2021

Stratospheric gravity waves over the mountainous island of South Georgia: testing a high-resolution dynamical model with 3-D satellite observations and radiosondes

Neil P. Hindley, Corwin J. Wright, Alan M. Gadian, Lars Hoffmann, John K. Hughes, David R. Jackson, John C. King, Nicholas J. Mitchell, Tracy Moffat-Griffin, Andrew C. Moss, Simon B. Vosper, and Andrew N. Ross

Data sets

AIRS/Aqua L1B Visible/Near Infrared (VIS/NIR) geolocated and calibrated radiances V005 AIRS project https://doi.org/10.5067/L8GM703NT8IK

SG-WEx: a collection of meteor radar observations, radiosondes and numerical modelling output over South Georgia Natural Environment Research Council et al. https://doi.org/10.5285/585b29ba4a054760ac4e53e7d95290b9

Model code and software

nhindley/acp-2020-465: Analysis and figure code for ACP journal article acp-2020-465 Hindley et al. (2021) (Version v1.0.0) N. P. Hindley https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4721883

Short summary

One limitation of numerical atmospheric models is spatial resolution. For atmospheric gravity waves (GWs) generated over small mountainous islands, the driving effect of these waves on atmospheric circulations can be underestimated. Here we use a specialised high-resolution model over South Georgia island to compare simulated stratospheric GWs to colocated 3-D satellite observations. We find reasonable model agreement with observations, with some GW amplitudes much larger than expected.