Gravity Wave Coupling between the Lower Atmosphere and Ionosphere in the South-East Australian Region

Atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs) generated by tropospheric weather events are an important mechanism for the upward transport of energy and momentum through the atmosphere.They may travel many thousands of kilometres from their source regions, and if they propagate to ionospheric heights, they can perturb the ionosphere and affect the propagation of radio waves.This, in turn, can affect the performance of high frequency (HF) instruments such as wide area surveillance over-the-horizon (OTH) radars which utilize the ionosphere.In this paper we demonstrate that reverse AGW ray tracing techniques can be used to identify the tropospheric sources of those AGWs that were responsible for the generation of medium scale travelling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) observed by ionospheric sounders in south-eastern Australia.