Premium
Evidence for Gravity Wave Seeding of Convective Ionospheric Storms Possibly Initiated by Thunderstorms
Author(s) -
Kelley M. C.,
Dao E. V.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1002/2017ja024707
Subject(s) - thunderstorm , ionosphere , convection , gravity wave , seeding , storm , airglow , satellite , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , instability , convective storm detection , convective instability , physics , environmental science , geophysics , gravitational wave , astronomy , mechanics , thermodynamics
With the increase in solar activity, the Communication/Outage Forecast System satellite decayed on orbit to below the F peak. As such, we can study the development of convective ionospheric storms and, most importantly, study large‐scale seeding of the responsible instability. For decades, gravity has been suggested as being responsible for the long wavelengths in the range of 200 to 1,000 km, as are commonly observed using airglow and satellite data. Here we suggest that convective thunderstorms are a likely source of gravity waves and point out that recent theoretical analysis has shown this connection to be quite possible.