| Wave characterization from space is an issue of considerable recent interest. Within the last decade, satellite measurements have detected gravity waves through their effects on airglow, but have been unable to completely characterize the waves. This dissertation presents a new method for interpreting satellite limb measurements of mesospheric airglow in the presence of gravity waves. It examines the coincident observation of a large-scale gravity wave over the western United States on 8 October 1996 from ground- and space-based imagers. The wave is uniquely characterized from each set of observations. A modified Abel inversion employing a phase shift technique developed for this project is utilized to retrieve airglow intensities from successive atmospheric layers. Analysis of the ground-based data yielded a wave with a horizontal wavelength of 2150 km, and a period of 2.75 hours. The orbitally observed wave appeared to have horizontal and vertical wavelengths of 2242, and 15 km, respectively. |
