Class

Article

College

College of Science

Department

English Department

Faculty Mentor

Yucheng Zhao

Presentation Type

Poster Presentation

Abstract

Atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs) that propagate up into the mesospheric region break and transfer energy into the region. This energy process affects seasonal temperatures in the mesosphere and has important implications for rocket launches and GPS satellites. Using the Utah State University (USU) Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (MTM) located at the Andes Lidar Observatory (ALO) in Chile (30°S), wave activity and seasonal temperature changes were studied over the Andes Mountain Range from Jan 2020 to the first few months of 2021 for this study. The primary goal of the whole project was to continue the long-term data collection and analysis (since 2009) and to better understand mesospheric gravity wave dynamics and climatology. The data derived from this research follows the same seasonal temperature variation patterns established by earlier work done by our group but was not without its drawbacks. Electronic interference from the meteor system collocated at ALO was present in an overwhelming number of nights observed, most likely due to failed cable shielding in the MTM camera system. This has made it difficult to get large amounts of useful wave data but left the temperature relatively unscathed.

Location

Logan, UT

Start Date

4-8-2022 12:00 AM

Included in

Physics Commons

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Apr 8th, 12:00 AM

Characteristics of Mesospheric Temperature and Gravity Waves Over Chile in 2020-2021

Logan, UT

Atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs) that propagate up into the mesospheric region break and transfer energy into the region. This energy process affects seasonal temperatures in the mesosphere and has important implications for rocket launches and GPS satellites. Using the Utah State University (USU) Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (MTM) located at the Andes Lidar Observatory (ALO) in Chile (30°S), wave activity and seasonal temperature changes were studied over the Andes Mountain Range from Jan 2020 to the first few months of 2021 for this study. The primary goal of the whole project was to continue the long-term data collection and analysis (since 2009) and to better understand mesospheric gravity wave dynamics and climatology. The data derived from this research follows the same seasonal temperature variation patterns established by earlier work done by our group but was not without its drawbacks. Electronic interference from the meteor system collocated at ALO was present in an overwhelming number of nights observed, most likely due to failed cable shielding in the MTM camera system. This has made it difficult to get large amounts of useful wave data but left the temperature relatively unscathed.