Near-inertial Gravity Waves and the Mesoscale Spectrum of Kinetic Energy in the Stratosphere

It is still unclear what dynamical processes underlie the -5/3 slope of the kinetic energy spectrum in the atmospheric mesocale. Recent global simulations (Skamarock et al 2017) have shown that, in the stratosphere, the energy in wavelengths between 2000 and 200 km is sensitive to vertical resolution, increasing by a factor of two as the vertical grid spacing decreases from 800 m to 100 m. We show evidence that much of this additional energy is associated with near-inertial gravity waves, thus pointing to a dominant role for near-inertial waves in the mesoscale kinetic energy spectrum in the stratosphere.