The internal wave field produced by a mountain and its wake in the atmosphere

Abstract

A forecast model is developed for the internal wave field generated by stratified flow over three-dimensional topography. The model is based on high-resolution nonlinear numerical simulation of the near-field flow around the topography combined with a ray-tracing of the far-field propagation of the internal waves generated by the near-field flow. The rays are traced in a Fourier-transform domain, and the resulting ray solution is mapped into a spatial solution by inverse Fourier transform. Examples of the wave field predicted by this model are compared with fully nonlinear numerical simulations using mesoscale forecast models.