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Stanford scientists track tiny atmospheric ripples using data from internet-beaming balloons:
Giant balloons launched into the stratosphere to beam internet service to Earth have helped scientists measure tiny ripples in our upper atmosphere, uncovering patterns that could improve weather forecasts and climate models.
The ripples, known as gravity waves or buoyancy waves, emerge when blobs of air are forced upward and then pulled down by gravity. Imagine a parcel of air that rushes over mountains, plunges toward cool valleys, shuttles across land and sea and ricochets off growing storms, bobbing up and down between layers of stable atmosphere in a great tug of war between buoyancy and gravity. A single wave can travel for thousands of miles, carrying momentum and heat along the way.
[...] Published Aug. 30 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, the new research draws on superpressure balloon data from the company Loon LLC, which designed the balloons to provide internet access to areas underserved by cell towers or fiber-optic cables. Spun out of Google parent company Alphabet in 2018, Loon has sent thousands of sensor-laden balloons sailing 12 miles up in the stratosphere – well above the altitude of commercial planes and most clouds – for 100 days or more at a stretch.
[...] The Loon data proved particularly valuable for calculating high-frequency gravity waves, which can rise and fall hundreds of times in a day, over distances ranging from a few hundred feet to hundreds of miles. “They’re tiny and they change on timescales of minutes. But in an integrated sense, they affect, for instance, the momentum budget of the jet stream, which is this massive planetary scale thing that interacts with storms and plays an important role in setting their course,” Sheshadri said.
Journal Reference:
Erik A. Lindgren, Aditi Sheshadri, Aurélien Podglajen, et al. Seasonal and Latitudinal Variability of the Gravity Wave Spectrum in the Lower Stratosphere, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (DOI: 10.1029/2020JD032850)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 06 2020, @05:27AM (3 children)
Because it's undescriptive. There's more ways than gravity waves to radiate gravitational energy.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday September 06 2020, @06:22AM
Um, no? Not?
Are you drunk, khallow, or just your normal stupid? How else would gravity waves propagate outside of gravitational energy? Do you think they would use emojis? Or perhaps electrical energy from the Electrical Universe? Maybe kinetic energy, from the friction of your hand, . . . never mind. No, khallow, you once again have interjected into a discussion that is massively over your head. You might as well have taken on Gaaaark over Dark Matter. It would have made as much sense.
So, my dear an fluffy, and inflatable khallow, listen up: undescriptive is just a way of saying you do not understand. We all get that. Nothing to be embarrassed about, unless you keep injecting yourself into discussions well beyond your level of comprehension.
So about those dead American soldiers, from an Austrian School point of view, what was in it for them? Trump wants to know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @08:16AM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 06 2020, @12:22PM
Further, some models of gravity at the quantum level have a second gravitational field, the gravitino [wikipedia.org]. So there could be a very complex structure to gravitational waves at the quantum level which would be wholly missed by labeling it merely "radiation".