Abstract
Abstract. This paper is focused on the nonmigrating tidal activity seen in the SABER/TIMED temperatures that is related to the major sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) taking place in the Arctic winter of 2003/2004. The emphasis is on the nonmigrating diurnal tides observed in the stratosphere and lower mesosphere which is usually accepted to be insignificant in comparison with that in the upper mesosphere and thermosphere. By using different independent spectral methods we found a significant amplification in December–January of the following nonmigrating 24-h tides: zonally symmetric (s=0), eastward propagating with zonal wavenumber 1 (E1), and westward propagating with zonal wavenumbers 2 and 3 (W2 and W3) tides. It has been found that the double peak nonmigrating tidal amplifications located in the stratosphere (~40 km) and in the lower mesosphere (~70 km) are a consequence of the maintained hydrostatic relation. By detailed comparison of the evolution and spatial structure of the nonmigrating diurnal tides with those of the migrating diurnal tide and stationary planetary waves (SPWs) evidence for a SPW-migrating tide interaction as a source of nonmigrating tides has been presented. Therefore, the nonmigrating 24-h tides turn out to be an important component of the middle atmosphere dynamics during the major SSW in the Arctic winter of 2003/2004.
Highlights
The sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) is a dramatic large-scale thermo-dynamical phenomenon in the winter polar region, which strongly affects the middle atmosphere
UK Met Office (UKMO) amplitudes of the SPW2 are quite similar, in the middle stratosphere (35–40 km height) where the maximum amplitude seen in both data sets is 5 K. These results indicate that the nonmigrating diurnal tides, W2, s=0, wavenumber 3 (W3) and E1, extracted from the SABER temperatures are not affected by aliasing effects from the SPW1 and SPW2
The main focus of this paper was to study the nonmigrating tidal activity seen in the SABER/ TIMED temperatures and possibly related to the major SSW in the Arctic winter of 2003/2004
Summary
The sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) is a dramatic large-scale thermo-dynamical phenomenon in the winter polar region, which strongly affects the middle atmosphere. An important advantage of the present study is that the tidal results are derived by a data analysis method, described in detail by Pancheva et al (2009a), where the tides (migrating and nonmigrating) and the planetary waves (zonally travelling and stationary) are simultaneously extracted from the satellite data. In this way a possible distortion of the weaker waves by the stronger ones, as well as some aliasing effects between the tides and SPWs were avoided
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