Modeling Thermospheric Responses to Acoustic-Gravity Waves Generated by Isolated Thunderstorms

Acoustic-Gravity Waves (AGWs) play key roles in transporting energy and momentum throughout the atmosphere. AGW sources include thunderstorms, natural hazards, and flow over topography, all found over the Continental United States (CONUS). Each source produces AGWs with distinct signatures and characteristics. Most prominently, thunderstorms and isolated convective sources typically produce concentric or semi-concentric patterns in mapped or imaged datasets (e.g., Heale et al., 2019) with high occurrences at midlatitudes (Perwitasari et al., 2016; Hoffmann and Alexander, 2010). The S-RAID (System for Rapid Analysis of Ionospheric Dynamics) dataset reveals extensive signatures of thermospheric AGWs in GNSS TEC over CONUS (Inchin et al., 2025).

The Model for Acoustic-Gravity wave Interactions and Coupling (e.g., Heale et al., 2014; Zettergren and Snively, 2015) is used in its “MAGIC Forest” form (Snively and Calhoun, AGU FM, 2021). Thunderstorm source parameters are determined to replicate common source characteristics (Heale et al., 2020, and references therein) which are used as input for a simplified heating source represented by a Gaussian squared function. After identifying and trialing multiple sources present during event observations from NEXRAD data, a single localized thunderstorm is determined as a likely main source. For the static ambient environment, empirical models (Drob et al., 2015; Emmert et al., 2022) are used in addition to NAVGEM data up the the lower thermosphere (Eckermann et al., 2018).

We examine AGW scales in temperature and airglow in the thermosphere and perform analyses of wave amplitude, wavelength, and speeds (e.g., Heale et al., 2014), as well as the momentum flux in the meridional and zonal directions over time. Results are compared to mapped TEC and mesopause-region airglow data and are interpreted to explain relationships between wave spectra and the effects of their propagation environments. Observable effects on AGW are discussed, including anisotropy in azimuth about the source, localization of effects, and evolutions of characteristics of waves in layers separated by altitude.