Planetary wave oscillations observed in ozone and PMSE data from Antarctica

Abstract

The effect of temperature variations caused by planetary waves on the occurrence of Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes (PMSE) has been a subject of recent research. These same temperature fluctuations have also been shown to modulate the ozone volume mixing ratio above 30km. In this study, ground-based radiometer measurements of ozone mixing ratio profiles at Troll station (72°S, 2°E), Antarctica are compared with PMSE extracted from the near-range measurements of the Sanae (72°S, 2°W) Super Dual Auroral Radar (SuperDARN) over the radiometer field of view. We show here that the resulting quasi-periodic fluctuations in PMSE correlate with the variations seen in the ozone. The ozone mixing-ratio variations may then be used to trace the phase variation of planetary waves with height to demonstrate that they extend from the stratosphere up to the mesopause. The results indicate that the modulation of PMSE occurrence frequency during the summer of 2009/10 is the result of two planetary waves with similar zonal structure and period, but with different vertical phase structures.