Latitudinal Distribution of the Parameters of Internal Gravity Waves in the Atmosphere Derived from Amplitude Fluctuations of Radio Occultation Signals

Abstract

The method of reconstructing the global distribution of statistical parameters of internal gravity waves (IGWs) in the atmosphere has been tested using the data of amplitude fluctuation measurements of a radio signal in satellite radio occultation (RO) observations. In our previous work, for the chosen model of the spatial IGW spectrum, its relationship with the spectra of amplitude fluctuations was obtained, an algorithm for reconstructing the model parameters was developed, and the reconstruction errors were estimated. The reconstructed parameters of the vertical IGW spectrum are the external scale, which separates the unsaturated large-scale waves from saturated small-scale waves, and the structural characteristic, which determines the spectral amplitude of saturated waves. These parameters are used to calculate the variance of temperature fluctuations and the potential energy of the waves. This article presents the altitude–latitude distribution of IGW parameters in the stratosphere according to the measurements of the COSMIC experiment in 2011. The characteristic features of these distributions are noted, and the results are compared with the data of other measurements.