Abstract
This study uses low-frequency, inaudible acoustic waves (infrasound) to
probe wind and temperature fluctuations associated with breaking gravity
waves in the middle atmosphere. Building on an approach introduced by
Chunchuzov et al., infrasound recordings are used to retrieve effective
sound-speed fluctuations in an inhomogeneous atmospheric layer that
causes infrasound backscattering. The infrasound was generated by
controlled blasts at Hukkakero, Finland and recorded at the IS37
infrasound station, Norway in the late summers 2014 - 2017. Our findings
indicate that the analyzed infrasound scattering occurs at mesospheric
altitudes of 50 - 75 km, a region where gravity waves interact under
non-linearity, forming thin layers of strong wind shear. The retrieved
fluctuations were analyzed in terms of vertical wave number spectra,
resulting in approximate kz-3 power law that corresponds to the
“universal“ saturated spectrum of atmospheric gravity waves. The kz-3
power law wavenumber range corresponds to vertical atmospheric scales of
33 - 625 m. The fluctuation spectra were compared to theoretical gravity
wave saturation theories as well as to independent wind measurements by
the Saura medium-frequency radar near Andøya Space Center around 100 km
west of IS37, yielding a good agreement in terms of vertical wavenumber
spectrum amplitudes and slopes. This suggests that the radar and
infrasound-based effective sound-speed profiles represent low- and
high-wavenumber regimes of the same “universal“ gravity wave spectrum.
The results illustrate that infrasound allows for probing fine-scale
dynamics not well captured by other techniques, suggesting that
infrasound can provide a complementary technique to probe atmospheric
gravity waves.