DEEPWAVE: Mountain waves in the Mesosphere

The Deepwave field project in June and July 2014 in New Zealand was the first attempt to directly observe gravity waves propagating from the surface of the earth to the mesosphere. In this preliminary post-project report, we summarize and compare the gravity waves encountered on different Deepwave GulfstreamV flight legs over the Southern Alps made under various synoptic flow conditions. Several statistical and quantitative wave measures are presented for each flight leg including vertical and horizontal energy flux, vertical flux of horizontal momentum, wave energy density and dominant wavelength. Wavelet methods are used to detect embedded downgoing waves from secondary generation. Waves at flight level (z=13km) are qualitatively compared with waves in the upper stratosphere and low mesosphere detected by airborne and satellite-borne lidar and imaging sensors