Seasonal behavior of meteor radar winds over Wuhan

Abstract

Abstract A newly installed meteor radar has been installed to measure winds in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) over Wuhan (114.4°E, 30.6°N). In the present study, a database of the first 25 months (February 2002–February 2004) of observations has been analyzed to investigate the climatology of mean winds and tides. The daily average zonal wind is charactered by a strong shear in solstices and an intense eastward flow in summer. The daily average meridional wind is northward in winter and southward in other seasons. There are some discrepancies between the radar mean winds and the HWM93 model winds. The summer zonal winds and meridional winds from the model are obviously weaker than our observations. The analysis on tides indicates that the diurnal tide is dominant at Wuhan. The seasonal variability is observed in both the diurnal and semidiurnal tidal amplitudes with the maximum values occurring usually near the equinoxes. Compared with the Global Scale Wave Model (GSWM00), the observed results generally show a smaller diurnal tidal amplitude and a larger semidiurnal tidal amplitude.