Developing the NASA Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE)

This presentation describes progress in the development of the AWE science instrumentation, measurements, data analyses, and complementary modelling capabilities. AWE is a NASA Mission of Opportunity designed to investigate the near-global properties and effects of gravity waves as they propagate into the Earth's upper atmosphere. In particular, AWE will measure the spectrum of small-scale (~30-300 km) gravity waves (GWs) generated by strong weather disturbances, e.g. convection and sustained flow over mountains, that impact the ionosphere, thermosphere and mesosphere (ITM).

The AWE instrument is currently under development at the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL), Utah State University (USU) and comprises a wide field of view (~600 km), IR 4-channel imaging system. It is based on the successful USU ground-based Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (AMTM) which measures selected emission lines in the OH (3,1) band to image gravity waves in the OH airglow layer, and at the same time to estimate atmospheric temperature at the OH layer altitude, using the well-established "ratio method". The completed AWE flight instrument is planned to be deployed on the International Space Station (ISS) in late 2022.

The ISS provides a near-ideal combination of geographic and local-time coverage to accomplish our proposed GW science, which seek not only near-global measurements (85% coverage) of wave spectral characteristics and correlations with their copious sources, but also quantifications of GW amplitudes, variances, and fluxes of momentum and energy into the ITM. Combined with state-of-the-art general circulation and high-resolution regional models the AWE mission will quantify the relative importance of source inputs versus propagation conditions towards determining effects of GWs on the ITM. Two years of nadir viewing GW measurements using the OH nightglow emission are planned. The first data products will be made available to the scientific community within 6 months of collection, with long-term data archive at the NASA Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF).