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The vertical structure of temperature observed by SABER (Sounding of Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry) aboard TIMED (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) and sprites observations made during the Eurosprite 2003 to 2007 observational campaign were analyzed. Sprite observations were made at two locations in France, namely Puy de Dome in the French Massif Central and at the Pic du Midi in the French Pyrenees. It is observed that the vertical structure of temperature shows evidence for a Mesospheric Inversion Layer (MIL) on those days on which sprites were observed. A few events are also reported in which sprites were not recorded, although there is evidence of a MIL in the vertical structure of the temperature. It is proposed that breaking gravity waves produced by convective thunderstorms facilitate the production of (a) sprites by modulating the neutral air-density and (b) MILs via the deposition of energy. The same proposition has been used to explain observations of lightings as well as both MILs and lightning arising out of deep convections., Comment: 34 pages, 5figures. Accepted in Journal of Geophysical Research, USA

Temperature and ozone volume mixing ratio profiles obtained from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) aboard the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS) over India and over the open ocean to the south during the period 1991-2001 are analyzed to study the characteristic features of the Mesospheric Inversion Layer (MIL) at 70 to 85 km altitude and its relation with the ozone mixing ratio at this altitude. We have also analyzed both the number of lightning flashes measured by the Optical Transient Detector (OTD) onboard the MicroLab-1 satellite for the period April 1995 - March 2000 and ground-based thunderstorm data collected from 78 widespread Indian observatories for the same period to show that the MIL amplitude and thunderstorm activity are correlated. All the data sets examined exhibit a semiannual variation. The seasonal variation of MIL amplitude and the frequency of occurrence of the temperature inversion indicate a fairly good correlation with the seasonal variation of thunderstorms and the average ozone volume mixing ratio across the inversion layer. The observed correlation between local thunderstorm activity, MIL amplitude and mesospheric ozone volume mixing ratio are explained by the generation, upward propagation and mesospheric absorption of gravity waves produced by thunderstorms., Comment: 45 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, PDF format, version published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmosphere

Atmospheric flows exhibit long-range spatiotemporal correlations manifested as the fractal geometry to the global cloud cover pattern concomitant with inverse power-law form for power spectra of temporal fluctuations of all scales ranging from turbulence (millimeters-seconds) to climate (thousands of kilometers-years). Long-range spatiotemporal correlations are ubiquitous to dynamical systems in nature and are identified as signatures of self-organized criticality. Standard models for turbulent fluid flows in meteorological theory cannot explain satisfactorily the observed multifractal (space-time) structures in atmospheric flows. Numerical models for simulation and prediction of atmospheric flows are subject to deterministic chaos and give unrealistic solutions. Deterministic chaos is a direct consequence of round-off error growth in iterative computations. Round-off error of finite precision computations doubles on an average at each step of iterative computations. Round-off error will propagate to the mainstream computation and give unrealistic solutions in numerical weather prediction and climate models which incorporate thousands of iterative computations in long-term numerical integration schemes. A recently developed non-deterministic cell dynamical system model for atmospheric flows predicts the observed self-organized criticality as intrinsic to quantumlike mechanics governing flow dynamics. Further, the fractal space-time structure to the stringlike atmospheric flow trajectory is resolved into a continuum of eddies. The eddy circulations obey Kepler third law of planetary motion and therefore eddy inertial masses obey Newton inverse square law of gravitation on all scales from microscopic to macroscale., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures

Observational studies indicate that there is a close association between geomagnetic storm and meteorological parameters. Geomagnetic field lines follow closely the isobars of surface pressure . A Physical mechanism linking upper atmospheric geomagnetic storm disturbances with tropospheric weather has been proposed by the author and her group where it is postulated that vertical mixing by turbulent eddy fluctuations results in the net transport upward of positive charges originating from lower levels accompanied simultaneously by downward flow of negative charges from higher levels. The present study reports enhancement of high frequency (<15 days period) fluctuations in daily surface pressure during March 1989 in association with major geomagnetic storm (Ap index = 246) on 13 march 1989., Comment: 1 Page, 1 Figure

Atmospheric flows exhibit long-range spatiotemporal correlations manifested as the fractal geometry to the global cloud cover pattern concomitant with inverse power law form for power spectra of temporal fluctuations on all space-time scales ranging from turbulence(centimeters-seconds) to climate(kilometers-years). Long-range spatiotemporal correlations are ubiquitous to dynamical systems in nature and are identified as signatures of self-organized criticality. Standard models in meteorological theory cannot explain satisfactorily the observed self-organized criticality in atmospheric flows. Mathematical models for simulation and prediction of atmospheric flows are nonlinear and do not possess analytical solutions. Finite precision computer realizations of nonlinear models give unrealistic solutions because of deterministic chaos, a direct consequence of round-off error growth in iterative numerical computations. Recent studies show that round-off error doubles on an average for each iteration of iterative computations. Round-off error propagates to the main stream computation and gives unrealistic solutions in numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate models which incorporate thousands of iterative computations in long-term numerical integration schemes. An alternative non-deterministic cell dynamical system model for atmospheric flows described in this paper predicts the observed self-organized criticality as intrinsic to quantumlike mechanics governing flow dynamics., Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, 1998 (in Press) (Springer-Verlag, Austria)