Evidence for 2-D Turbulence in the Lower Thermosphere (Invited)

Details Evidence for 2-D Turbulence in the Lower Thermosphere (Invited) Evidence for 2-D Turbulence in the Lower Thermosphere (Invited)

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsa32a..05k&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SA32A-05

Other

[0310] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Airglow And Aurora, [3360] Atmospheric Processes / Remote Sensing, [3369] Atmospheric Processes / Thermospheric Dynamics

Scientific paper

One of the most remarkable observations during the last decade involves events in the polar regions after solstice launches of the space shuttle. Two well-documented events occurred in January 2003 and in August 2007. The experimental results will be summarized and include lidar and visual detection of noctilucent clouds (NLC), rapid expansion and net transport of the shuttle plume toward the poles, and intense iron atom and sporadic E layers over Antarctica in one event and over the Arctic in another. There are at least two competing explanations and perhaps others will be presented in this session. The rapid expansion of the plume can be explained by upward hydrogen transport where it then can diffuse horizontally. Other features seem more problematic. We argue that 2-D turbulence can explain a number of these features. The 90-110 km altitude range where the shuttle burns is known to have very high winds and wind shears. One experiment showed that these high winds were quite different only 400 km away, indicating horizontal shears. The 2-D turbulence theory, first studied by G. K. Batchelor, has two important features: (a) enhanced diffusion over 3-D turbulence and (b) an inverse cascade that leads to very large eddies in the flow, even if the input scale is modest. This process could thus explain the expansion and transport, even of the iron, which, it seems, cannot duplicate the hydrogen behavior. The idea that a magnetized Rossby wave might be the input source of mesoscale structure will be addressed.

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