Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2015

Presentation information

Oral

Symbol P (Space and Planetary Sciences) » P-CG Complex & General

[P-CG32] Planetary atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere

Tue. May 26, 2015 11:00 AM - 11:45 AM A03 (APA HOTEL&RESORT TOKYO BAY MAKUHARI)

Convener:*Takeshi Imamura(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science), Kanako Seki(Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory, Nagoya University), Yukihiro Takahashi(Department of Cosmosciences, Graduate School of Science, Hokkaido University), Yoshiyuki O. Takahashi(Graduate School of Science, Kobe University), Keiichiro Fukazawa(Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University), Hiromu Nakagawa(Planetary Atmosphere Physics Laboratory, Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University), Chair:Takeshi Imamura(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science)

11:18 AM - 11:21 AM

[PCG32-P09] Radio holographic analysis of Venus' radio occultation data

3-min talk in an oral session

*Mayu MIYAMOTO1, Takeshi IMAMURA2, Hiroki ANDO2, Toshitaka TSUDA3, Yuichi AOYAMA4 (1.Department of Earth and Planetary Science, The University of Tokyo, 2.Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, 3.Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, 4.National Institute of Polar Research)

Keywords:Venus, Gravity wave, Radio occultation, Radio holographic analysis

Gravity waves are considered to drive the atmospheric general circulation by vertical transportation of momentum and energy. Gravity wave breaking occurs via local instabilities such as convective instability and shear instability as the amplitude of the wave increases in the course of upward propagation. Turbulence following the gravity wave braking plays an important role in the diffusion of atmospheric substances, momentum, and energy.
Gravity waves with vertical wavelengths from a few tens of meters to kilometers have been observed in the Earth's atmosphere by radiosondes and radars. Also in the atmospheres of other planets, gravity waves are observed by various methods including radio occultation. The radio occultation method relies on the measurement of the frequency shift of the received signal caused by the bending of radio waves in the radial gradient of the refractive index in the atmosphere.
The geometrical optics method has long been used for the analysis of radio occultation data. However, this method cannot disentangle multipath rays and vertical resolution is limited by the size of the Fresnel zone (~ 1 km). Because of this limitation, only a limited part of the gravity wave spectrum has been covered, and thus the propagation and dissipation mechanisms of the gravity waves in other planets are poorly understood.
Radio holographic methods have been proposed for processing of radio occultation signals in multipath regions and obtaining atmospheric profiles with high resolution. One of them is the Full Spectrum Inversion (FSI), which was recently applied to GPS occultation data of the Earth's atmosphere. By applying this technique to Venus Express radio occultation data, we derived temperature profiles with high vertical resolution. In this presentation, the vertical wave number spectra will be compared among different altitudes, latitudes, and longitudes, and the spatial distribution of unstable layers will be investigated for studying propagation and dissipation of the gravity waves.