Gravity Wave Activity

Gravity waves (GW) transport energy and momentum over large distances in the atmosphere and can influence wind and temperature. AEOLUS measurements are in principle suited for the derivation of a lower bound for the kinetic energy density , which is transported by GW. GW are superimposed on the atmospheric background. In order to investigate them, the AEOLUS measurements must be detrended, so the atmospheric background must be adapted and removed. Then, the residuals are analyzed. We use here a repeating cubic spline approach (Wüst et al., 2017), which is sensitive to 10 km vertical wavelength and more. Since the individual AEOLUS profiles cover different height ranges,  is summed up over the whole profile and divided by the length of the profile. We call the result the normalized . It has the unit units. The figure shows the development of the normalized ekinover time during October and November 2020.

Ekin_10km