ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-9-13039-2009 Properties of the average distribution of equatorial Kelvin waves investigated by ray tracing techniques Ern M. 1 Cho H.-K. 2 Preusse P. 1 Eckermann S. D. 3 Institute of Chemistry and Dynamics of the Geosphere (ICG-1), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea E.O. Hulburt Center, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA 11 06 2009 9 3 13039 13091 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/13039/2009/acpd-9-13039-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/13039/2009/acpd-9-13039-2009.pdf

Kelvin waves excited by tropospheric convection are considered to be one of the main drivers of the stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). In this paper we combine several measured data sets with the Gravity wave Regional Or Global RAy Tracer (GROGRAT) in order to study the forcing and vertical propagation of Kelvin waves. Launch distributions for the ray tracer at tropospheric altitudes are deduced from space-time spectra of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses, as well as outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and rainfall data measured by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. The resulting stratospheric Kelvin wave spectra are compared to ECMWF operational analyses and temperature measurements of the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) satellite instrument. Questions addressed are: the relative importance of source variability versus wind modulation, the relative importance of radiative and turbulent damping versus wave breaking, and the minimum altitude where freely propagating waves dominate the spectrum.

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