Spectrum Analysis of Gravity Waves Based on Sensors Mounted on a New Round-Trip Airborne Flat-Floating Sounding System

• Main Authors: Yang He, Zheng Sheng, Jie Zhang, Mingyuan He, Shudao Zhou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-04-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: physical sensors; gravity wave spectrum; detection technology; radiosonde
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/7/2123

In this study, sensors mounted on a new type of round-trip airborne flat-floating sounding system (RTAFSS) were used to obtain the observation data of the three stages of "rising, flat-floating and falling". This new sounding method has a good application prospect. We performed spectrum analysis on the normalized temperature fluctuation, and the vertical wavenumber spectrum from the rising and falling stages and the horizontal wavenumber spectrum from the flat-floating stage were obtained. This is the first time the complete gravity wave spectrum characteristics were obtained from three consecutive stages: rising, flat-floating and falling. The results show that the gravity wave spectrum of the three stages can be well obtained by RTAFSS. For the horizontal wavenumber spectrum, the spectral slope is basically around −2, and the difference in the spectral structure of the horizontal wave number spectrum may be due to the intermittent turbulent activity and the variable intensity of the gravitational wave during its propagation. This study aims to make experimental exploration of the spectrum characteristics of gravity waves by this new type of observation data. It is expected to reveal the spectrum characteristics of horizontal wavenumber in the stratosphere region of China, providing a theoretical basis for spectrum analysis in a wider space–time range after further network observation of RTAFSS.