Wave activity at ionospheric heights above the highest Andes Mountains detected from COSMIC electron density data

89. ALEXANDER, P., DE LA TORRE, A., LLAMEDO, P., HIERRO, YEN, N., NAVA, B., RADICELLA, S., SCHMIDT, T. Y WICKERT

Taipei

Conferencia; 2nd International Conference on GPS Radio Occultation; 2013

The interpretation of ionospheric irregularities in terms of gravity waves (GW)propagating from the lower atmosphere was introduced by Hines, C.O., Internalatmospheric gravity waves at ionospheric heights, Can. J. Phys., 38, 1441-1481, 1960.Presently, observations of electron density and minor constituents may be detectedby various instruments like incoherent scatter radar, ionosondes, all-sky airglowimagers and satellite remote sensing.Near to the Southern mid-latitude Andes region, where significant GW in the lowerand middle atmosphere have been repeatedly observed, Smith et al. (2009) reportedimaging observations of mesospheric gravity-waves in night-time airglow emissions.Present GPS radio occultation (RO) missions provide roughly 2500 globally distributed,long-term stable, all-weather profiles per day.From neutral atmosphere CHAMP and SAC-C GPS RO data, de la Torre and Alexander(2005) and other works have shown the presence of large amplitude GW in the uppertroposphere and lower stratosphere at the Southern Hemisphere to the East of thehighest Andes Mountains during winter due to wind forcing on topography.In addition to lower and middle neutral atmosphere data, GPS RO allow to derivevertical profiles of ionospheric variables.In the last years the COSMIC mission delivered about 1500 post-processed profiles ofionospheric parameters per day, we are specifically interested in electron density Ne.