Vosper, SB and Ross, AN orcid.org/0000-0002-8631-3512 (2020) Sampling Errors in Observed Gravity Wave Momentum Fluxes from Vertical and Tilted Profiles. Atmosphere, 11 (1). 57. ISSN 2073-4433
Abstract
Observations from radiosondes or from vertically pointing remote sensing profilers are often used to estimate the vertical flux of momentum due to gravity waves. For planar, monochromatic waves, these vertically integrated fluxes are equal to the phase averaged flux and equivalent to the horizontal averaging used to deduce momentum flux from aircraft data or in numerical models. Using a simple analytical solution for two-dimensional hydrostatic gravity waves over an isolated ridge, it is shown that this equivalence does not hold for mountain waves. For a vertical profile, the vertically integrated flux estimate is proportional to the horizontally integrated flux and decays with increasing distance of the profile location from the mountain. For tilted profiles, such as those obtained from radiosonde ascents, there is a further sampling error that increases as the trajectory extends beyond the localised wave field. The same sampling issues are seen when the effects of the Coriolis force on the gravity waves are taken into account. The conclusion of this work is that caution must be taken when using radiosondes or other vertical profiles to deduce mountain wave momentum fluxes.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | gravity wave; momentum flux; mountain wave; radiosonde; sampling error |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/K012584/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jan 2020 15:33 |
Last Modified: | 03 Jan 2020 15:33 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/atmos11010057 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:155036 |