Signatures of gravity wave-induced instabilities in balloon lidar soundings of polar mesospheric clouds

Abstract

The Balloon Lidar Experiment (BOLIDE), which was part of the Polar Mesospheric Cloud Turbulence (PMC Turbo) Balloon Mission has captured vertical profiles of PMCs during a 6 d flight along the Arctic circle in July 2018. The high-resolution soundings (20 m vertical and 10 s temporal resolution) reveal highly structured layers with large gradients in the volume backscatter coefficient. We systematically screen the BOLIDE dataset for small-scale variability by assessing these gradients at high resolution. We find longer tails of the probability density distributions of these gradients compared to a normal distribution, indicating intermittent behaviour. The high occurrence rate of large gradients is assessed in relation to the 15 min averaged layer brightness and the spectral power of short-period (5–62 min) gravity waves based on PMC layer altitude variations. We find that variability on small scales occurs during weak, moderate, and strong gravity wave activity. Layers with below-average brightness are less likely to show small-scale variability in conditions of strong gravity wave activity. We present and discuss the signatures of this small-scale variability, and possibly related dynamical processes, and identify potential cases for future case studies and modelling efforts.