Background Lamb waves in the Earth's atmosphere

Abstract

Abstract Lamb waves of the Earth's atmosphere in the millihertz band have been considered as transient phenomena excited only by large events. Here, we show the first evidence of background Lamb waves in the Earth's atmosphere from 0.2 to 10 mHz, based on the array analysis of microbarometer data from the USArray in 2012. The observations suggest that the probable excitation source is atmospheric turbulence in the troposphere. Theoretically, their energy in the troposphere tunnels into the thermosphere at a resonant frequency via thermospheric gravity wave, where the observed amplitudes indeed take a local minimum. The energy leak through the frequency window could partly contribute to thermospheric wave activity.