Gravity Wave Modeling and Airglow Applications
Abstract
This AASERT supplemental grant supported numerical, theoretical, and observational studies of gravity wave and shear instability processes in the atmosphere and their impact on airglow layers near the mesopause. Efforts during the past year have explored new ground in vortex dynamics, extended our numerical studies toward both wave breaking and shear instability dynamics, and addressed the completion of a number of papers initiated under this AFOSR grant. Collectively, this grant has contributed enormously to our understanding of a diversity of wave and shear instability processes, the transition to turbulence in such flows, the dynamics of vorticity and turbulence, and applications to atmospheric measurements. Our studies have defined what we believe to be the important dynamics accompanying the transition to turbulence in a breaking wave, the dynamics of a vortex pair evolving in mean shear and stratification in two and three dimensions, and the implications of a variable wind environment for gravity waves observed in mesospheric airglow. More recent efforts have addressed the dynamics of twist waves and spanwise-varying vortex sheets as well as very-high-resolution KR shear instability dynamics. Interesting implications include significant anisotropy in turbulence and mixing relative to expectations of turbulence theory applied to such flows.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 14, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA380242
Entities
People
- David C Fritts
Organizations
- Northwest Research Associates