First ground-based observations of mesopause temperatures above the Eastern-Mediterranean Part II: OH*-climatology and gravity wave activity

Abstract

In this study, we present an analysis of approximately four years of nightly temperature data, acquired with the OH-spectrometer GRIPS 10 (GRound based Infrared P-branch Spectrometer), which was installed in Tel Aviv (32.11°N, 34.8°E), Israel in November 2011 for routine measurements. As our instrument does not give any height information, we use TIMED-SABER data in order to answer the question concerning the height region our measurement technique exactly addresses.For the first time, we estimate the density of wave potential energy for periods between some minutes and some hours for this station. These values are typical for gravity waves.Since GRIPS measurements do not currently provide vertically resolved data, the Brunt-Väisälä frequency, which is needed for the estimation of potential energy density, is calculated using TIMED-SABER measurements. The monthly mean density of wave potential energy is presented for periods shorter and longer than 60min. For the winter months (November, December, and January), the data base allows the calculation of a seasonal mean for the different years.This publication is the companion paper to Silber et al. (2016). Here, we focus on oscillations with shorter periods.