Data Collection from Zero pressure solar balloons for Gravity Wave Detection

The discovery of atmospheric gravity waves and their capability to transfer energy through the atmosphere has accelerated the interest in weather balloon soundings and data collections to locate and characterize the generation of gravity waves. By looking into the formation of the gravity waves, caused by wind shear, convection, or topography, one is able to get a better idea of how they impact atmospheric conditions, with the intent of using the information to improve weather predictions. Previous research has been focused on using weather balloons and radiosondes to identify gravity waves; the drawback of this method is that it only takes a thin slice of the atmosphere (~1.5-hour flights). Presently, we are using zero pressure solar balloons with high accuracy GPS IMUs and radiosondes to take atmospheric readings while in flight giving a longer window (~8-hour flights) to collect data and detect gravity waves. Currently, the wind data is studied using a combination of the Morlet wavelet transform and the hodograph methods to identify gravity waves in the data. The data is then run through an analysis that detects the location, frequency, propagation direction, and amplitude which can be used to distinguish the cause. This research accomplishes this by comparing examples from atmospheric background readings to assist in identifying the source of the gravity waves.