Gravity Waves and Turbulence over the Andes Lidar Observatory

The Andes in South America are a prime location to study the breakdown of gravity waves into instabilities and turbulence. Due to their constant generation at this hotspot, signatures of waves and instabilities abound in both sodium lidar data from the Andes Lidar Observatory (ALO) and OH airglow data from the co-located ANI2 imager. Analysis of phenomena seen by both instruments is used to differentiate between atmospheric instabilities and gravity waves of numerous scales.