Global Mesospheric Gravity Waves and Temperature Observed by The NASA Atmospheric Waves Experiment

The Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) is a NASA Mission of Opportunity designed to investigate the near-global properties and effects of gravity waves (GWs) as they propagate into the Earth’s upper atmosphere. In particular, AWE will measure the spectrum of small-scale (horizontal wavelength ~30-300 km) GWs generated by strong weather disturbances, e.g., convection and sustained flow over mountains, that may impact the ionosphere and thermosphere via the mesosphere. For that purpose, an IR 4-channel imaging system was built by the Space Dynamic Lab (SDL) at Utah State University (USU). In November 2023, it was successfully launched and deployed on the International Space Station (ISS), and science data collection was started.



The AWE instrument maps the nighttime hydroxyl (OH) layer (~87 km altitude) along the ISS trajectory, providing 2D fields of nighttime mesospheric temperature variations and OH band intensity over a 600-km field of view, every second. This presentation will utilize the first 4 months of AWE data to investigate the seasonal and hemispheric characteristics of the mesospheric gravity waves and temperature in the mesopause region.