Resolving spatial dynamics at polar latitudes using the GROMOS-C radiometer on Svalbard and the Nordic meteor radar cluster
- 1University Bern, Institute of Applied Physics, Microwave Physics, Bern, Switzerland (gunter.stober@iap.unibe.ch)
- 2The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø Geophysical Observatory, Tromsø, Norway
- 3Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, University of Oulu, Finland
- 4Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester, UK
- 5National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan
- 6Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research Division for Ionospheric and Magnetospheric Research, Nagoya, Japan
- 7Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden
The middle polar atmosphere dynamics is driven by atmospheric waves from the planetary scale to small scale perturbation due to gravity waves. The different atmospheric waves are characterized by their temporal and spatial variability posing challenges to ground-based remote sensing techniques to disentangle and resolve the spatio-temporal ambiguity. Here we present two ground-based remote sensing techniques to resolving spatio-temporal variability at the polar middle atmosphere.
Since 2017 the GROMOS-C radiometer measures ozone and winds at NyÅlesund (78.9°N, 11.9°E) on Svalbard. The radiometer employs four beams in the cardinal directions at 22.5° elevation angle to retrieve ozone profiles and winds at altitudes between 30-75 km. the temporal resolution of the ozone retrievals is 30 minutes. Further, we obtain daily mean winds. Due to the high polar latitude the spatial separation between the beams at stratospheric altitudes covers several degrees in longitude to infer spatial gradients in the ozone densities and their perturbation due to planetary waves.
Another recently established ground-based remote sensing approach to retrieve the spatial characteristic at the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) is provided by the Nordic meteor radar cluster consisting of the meteor radars at Tromsø, Alta, Esrange, Sodankylä and on Svalbard. Since October 2019 horizontally resolved winds are obtained using a 3DVAR approach with a temporal resolution of 30 minutes and a vertical resolution of 2 km. Here we present preliminary results to infer horizontal wavelength spectra, the tidal variability as well as gravity activity of the winter season 2019/20.
Both datasets are of high value for data assimilation into weather forecast and reanalysis models or for cross-comparisons and validation of meteorological analysis systems (e.g. NAVGEM-HA).
How to cite: Stober, G., Schranz, F., Hall, C., Kozlovsky, A., Lester, M., Tsutsumi, M., Nozawa, S., Belova, E., Kero, J., Hocke, K., and Murk, A.: Resolving spatial dynamics at polar latitudes using the GROMOS-C radiometer on Svalbard and the Nordic meteor radar cluster, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-9822, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-9822, 2020.
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Impressive instruments for deriving middle atmosphere features, especially horizontal winds! Just a small question: what procedure is applied between the two MERRA2 zonal / meridional winds subfigures? (Change between "MRA2 U" to "MRA2 U (conv)").
Hi, thank you for your comment. Conv is short for convolved and means that the MERRA2 wind profiles were convolved with the averaging kernel matrix of the instrument GROMOS-C. This smoothes the MERRA2 profiles and adjusts them to the vertical resolution of GROMOS-C. It is done to compare the GROMOS-C measurements with the MERRA2 data because MERRA2 has a higher vertical resolution.