Identification

Title

Migrating semidiurnal tide during the September equinox transition in the Northern Hemisphere

Abstract

Specified Dynamics Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with thermosphere-ionosphere eXtension simulations are used to investigate the solar migrating semidiurnal tide (SW2) around September equinox at middle to high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. A pronounced minimum in SW2 occurs around September equinox, and is characterized by a similar to 50% reduction in tidal amplitudes for 20-30 days. Analysis of the simulation results indicates that the SW2 minimum occurs due to the seasonal transition of the zonal mean zonal winds, which alter the generation and propagation of different symmetric and antisymmetric modes of SW2. In particular, the antisymmetric modes notably decrease due to the more hemispherically symmetric zonal winds around equinox. It is further demonstrated that interannual variability in the timing of the SW2 minimum is related to the timing of the seasonal transition of the zonal mean zonal winds in the middle atmosphere. This leads to an earlier occurrence of the SW2 minimum during years when the seasonal transition occurs earlier, such as the recent 2019 September equinox which saw an earlier transition of the Southern Hemisphere zonal mean zonal winds following the occurrence of a sudden stratosphere warming. The connection between the timing of the SW2 minimum in the Northern Hemisphere and the timing of the seasonal transition in the middle atmosphere winds is confirmed by seasonal variability of 12-h tides deduced from specular meteor radar observations at middle to high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d77w6gkz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2021-02-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2021 American Geophysical Union.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-11T19:09:39.459400

Metadata language

eng; USA