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# Atmospheric Disturbance Characteristics in the Lower-middle Stratosphere Inferred from Observations by the Round-Trip Intelligent Sounding System (RTISS) in China

• Through multi-order structure function analysis and singularity measurement, the Hurst index and intermittent parameter are obtained to quantitatively describe the characteristics of atmospheric disturbance based on the round-trip intelligent sounding system (RTISS) in the lower-middle stratosphere. According to the third-order structure function, small-scale gravity waves are classified into three states: stable, unstable, and accompanied by turbulence. The evolution of gravity waves is reflected by the variation of the third-order structure function over time, and the generation of turbulence is also observed. The atmospheric disturbance intensity parameter RT is defined in this paper and contains both wave disturbance (${H}_{1}$) and random intermittency (${C}_{1}$). RT is considered to reflect the characteristics of atmospheric disturbance more reasonably than either of the above two alone. In addition, by obtaining the horizontal wavenumber spectrum from the flat-floating stage and the vertical wavenumber spectrum from the ascending and descending stages at the height range of 18–24 km, we found that when the gravity wave activity is significantly enhanced in the horizontal direction, the amplitude of the vertical wavenumber spectrum below is significantly larger, which shows a significant impact of gravity wave activity on the atmospheric environment below.
摘要: 基于国内的往返式智能探空系统（RTISS），通过多阶结构函数分析和奇异测度，获得了Hurst指数和间歇性参数，以定量描述中下平流层的大气扰动特征。根据三阶结构函数，小尺度重力波被分为稳定、不稳定和破碎三种状态。重力波的演化表现为三阶结构函数随时间的变化，也观察到湍流的产生。本文定义了大气扰动强度参数RT，包含波扰动（H1）和随机间歇性（C1），RT被认为比单独使用上述两者能更合理地反映大气扰动的特征。此外，通过获得18-24 km高度范围内的平漂阶段的水平波数谱和上升和下降阶段的垂直波数谱，我们发现当重力波活动在水平方向显著增强时，下方18-24 km高度范围内的垂直波数谱的幅振幅明显增大，说明重力波活动对下方大气环境影响显着。
• Figure 1.  Schematic diagram of the RTISS. L is the distance from the station to the radiosonde, Ω and θ are the azimuth and elevation, respectively, and the black curve is the detection trajectory of WH on 30 October 2018.

Figure 2.  (a) The trajectory of the flat-floating phase and (b) the floating height variation with time.

Figure 3.  The third-order structure function of the flat-floating stage from (a) WH2, (b) YC2, and (c) CS2. The drawn third-order structure functions are absolute values, where the red dots represent negative values and the blue dots represent positive values.

Figure 4.  The multi-order structure function (q = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) with the separation scale r calculated from the horizontal velocity component ${u_L}$ from (a) WH2, (b) YC2, and (c) CS2 in the flat-floating stage.

Figure 5.  The variation of horizontal velocity component ${u_L}$ along the meridional (zonal) distance $L$ from (a) WH2, (b) YC2, and (c) CS2, where ${{{r}}_1}$, ${r_2}$, ${r_3}$, and ${r_4}$ correspond to the intervals with significantly large fluctuations.

Figure 6.  Velocity increments calculated from beginning to end in the WH2 data series where the separation distances are (a) 64 m, (b) 512 m, (c) 4096 m, and (d) 32 768 m, respectively.

Figure 7.  Third-order structure function on different segments for WH2.

Figure 8.  (a) The variation of multi-order singularity measure with spatial scale for WH2 data. (b) The variation of slope with order $q$ for WH2 data. (c)–(d) The same as WH2 but for YC2. (e)–(f) The same as WH2 but for CS2. The red dotted line corresponds to $K\left( q \right) = 0$, and the solid black line (and dashed line) represents the tangent slope of the turbulent (gravity wave) area at $q$ = 1.

Figure 9.  The third-order structure function of the flat-floating stage from other data series. The purple dashed line and the green dashed line represent the result of linear fitting, and the slope value is marked beside each line. When there is an obvious change in slope, the dashed lines of different colors are used to distinguish it.

Figure 10.  (a) Hurst parameter (blue curve) and intermittency (red curve). (b) The spectral amplitude from the flat-floating stage (blue curve) and the vertical range of 18–24 km (red curve). (c) The intensity of atmospheric disturbance RT (blue curve) and the average height in the flat-floating stage (red curve) in 12 sets of data. The numbers in the figure correspond to the serial numbers in Table 1.

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## Manuscript History

Manuscript revised: 29 June 2021
Manuscript accepted: 24 August 2021
###### 通讯作者: 陈斌, bchen63@163.com
• 1.

沈阳化工大学材料科学与工程学院 沈阳 110142

## Atmospheric Disturbance Characteristics in the Lower-middle Stratosphere Inferred from Observations by the Round-Trip Intelligent Sounding System (RTISS) in China

###### Corresponding author: Zheng SHENG, 19994035@sina.com;
• 1. College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
• 2. Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
• 3. Unit No. 95806 of Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Beijing 100076, China

Abstract: Through multi-order structure function analysis and singularity measurement, the Hurst index and intermittent parameter are obtained to quantitatively describe the characteristics of atmospheric disturbance based on the round-trip intelligent sounding system (RTISS) in the lower-middle stratosphere. According to the third-order structure function, small-scale gravity waves are classified into three states: stable, unstable, and accompanied by turbulence. The evolution of gravity waves is reflected by the variation of the third-order structure function over time, and the generation of turbulence is also observed. The atmospheric disturbance intensity parameter RT is defined in this paper and contains both wave disturbance (${H}_{1}$) and random intermittency (${C}_{1}$). RT is considered to reflect the characteristics of atmospheric disturbance more reasonably than either of the above two alone. In addition, by obtaining the horizontal wavenumber spectrum from the flat-floating stage and the vertical wavenumber spectrum from the ascending and descending stages at the height range of 18–24 km, we found that when the gravity wave activity is significantly enhanced in the horizontal direction, the amplitude of the vertical wavenumber spectrum below is significantly larger, which shows a significant impact of gravity wave activity on the atmospheric environment below.

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