Courtesy of Lyudmila Zinkova

Reading the weather through atmospheric waves

The infrasound technology, that was first designed and used for nuclear test monitoring, now provides crucial information to characterize the atmospheric waves of natural origin and predicts their impact on meteorology for improving future weather forecasting up to several weeks. ARISE 2 monitors the stratosphere, listening to very low-frequency sound waves generated by loud sources, such as ocean waves, volcanic eruptions, supersonic aircrafts and man-made explosions

The benefits of the ARISE project will be a better description of the atmosphere and an improved accuracy in short- and medium-range weather forecasts. ARISE measurements will also be used to improve the representation of gravity waves in stratosphere-resolving climate models, crucial to estimating the impact of a range of stratospheric climate forcing on the troposphere. In the long term, the data will be used for monitoring of middle atmosphere climate, its long-term mean trends and changes in extreme events. The benefits also include civil applications related to monitoring of natural hazards.

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