Abstract
Polar mesospheric cloud (PMC) imaging and lidar profiling performed
aboard the 5.9 day PMC Turbo balloon flight from Sweden to northern
Canada in July 2018 revealed a wide variety of gravity wave (GW) and
instability events occurring nearly continuously at approximately 82 km.
We describe one event exhibiting GW breaking and associated vortex rings
driven by apparent convective instability. Using PMC Turbo imaging with
spatial and temporal resolution of 20 m and 2 s, respectively, we
quantify the GW horizontal wavelength, propagation direction, and
apparent phase speed, and we identify vortex rings with diameters of 3-5
km and horizontal spacing of ~5 km. Lidar data show GW
vertical displacements of ±0.3 km. From the data, we find a GW intrinsic
frequency and vertical wavelength of 0.009 ± 0.003 rad s-1 and 9 ± 4 km,
respectively. We show that these values are consistent with the
predictions of numerical simulations of idealized GW breaking. We
estimate the momentum deposition rate per unit mass during this event to
be 0.04 ± 0.02 m s-2 and show that this value is consistent with the
observed GW. Comparison to simulation gives a mean energy dissipation
rate for this event of 0.05-0.4 W kg-1, which is consistent with other
reported in-situ measurements at the Arctic summer mesopause.