Thermospheric Wave Activity in Neutral Winds and Temperature Above Antarctica

We present signatures of wave-like perturbations in Earth's neutral thermosphere above Antarctica, derived from long time series measurements of wind and temperature that were obtained using ground-based Doppler spectroscopy of the 630 nm optical emission from atomic oxygen. This widely-used technique typically requires dark-sky observing conditions, and so cannot provide continuous time-series results spanning more than a single night. However, the observatories at McMurdo and South Pole stations in Antarctica are at sufficiently high latitude that they experience several months of continuous darkness during winter. Further, clear-sky conditions can persist for many days at South Pole. As a result, we have recently obtained a remarkable 28-day stretch of virtually uninterrupted thermospheric wind and temperature measurements from South Pole during April of 2026. Filtering these data to remove periods longer than 6 hours shows that wave-like oscillations were ubiquitous at 240 km altitude during this observing run, with bursts of enhanced perturbations occurring during times of elevated magnetic activity. (Unfiltered) perturbation spectra generally follow a -5/3 log-log slope, with clear peaks also appearing at diurnal and semi-diurnal periods, plus several higher harmonics. These data will support multiple future studies, including investigating the relative roles of multi-step vertical coupling versus in-situ geomagnetic forcing in exciting these wave oscillations.