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Bow and stern waves triggered by the Moon's shadow boat
Author(s) -
Liu J. Y.,
Sun Y. Y.,
Kakinami Y.,
Chen C. H.,
Lin C. H.,
Tsai H. F.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2011gl048805
Subject(s) - solar eclipse , geology , total electron content , bow wave , ionosphere , equator , stern , geophysics , geodesy , eclipse , meteorology , tec , physics , latitude , astronomy , solar wind , plasma , oceanography , quantum mechanics
It has been predicted that the Moon's shadow, the cooling region, sweeping over the Earth's atmosphere with a supersonic speed could trigger bow waves since 1970. The longest total solar eclipse within next hundred years occurring on 22 July 2009 sweeps over the Eastern Asia region during the noontime period. An analysis of the Hilbert‐Huang transform (HHT) is applied to study ionospheric TEC (total electron content) derived from ground‐based GPS receivers in Taiwan and Japan. We not only find the feature of the predicted bow wave but also the stern wave on the equator side of the eclipse path, as well as the stern wake right behind the Moon's shadow boat. The bow and stern waves are formed by acoustic gravity waves of periods about 3 and/or 5 minutes traveling equatorward with a phase speed of about 100 m/s in the ionosphere.