Abstract

Atmospheric gravity waves have a wide a variety of sources such as wind flow over mountains, convection, jet stream instabilities. However, most observations of gravity waves allow us to only make informed guesses of their sources using their location and spatial characteristics. Here we use stratospheric gravity waves from AIRS (Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder) and ray trace them back to their sources using GROGRAT (Gravity-wave Regional Or Global Ray Tracer). Our study focuses on the southern winter stratosphere, where some of the most intense stratospheric gravity wave activity is found. Here, questions remain about ‘missing momentum flux’ near 60 °S which is present in observations, but not in general circulation models. We use our backwards traced rays to investigate the lateral propagation of these waves, small island sources and the split between orographic and non-orographic waves. This work aims answer the question: “Where do gravity waves observed in the stratosphere come from?”