Wave coupling across the winter polar mesopause

The coupling of waves across the polar mesopause into the thermosphere is a topic of considerable interest. Wind observations at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) at Eureka (80 N, 85 W) in the Canadian Arctic, in combination with ionospheric measurements associated with the Canadian High Arctic Ionospheric Network, provide the observational means to investigate this coupling. Models such as WACCM-X, TIEGCM and ECHAIM are also used to examine this coupling. This work is part of the VERA (VERtical coupling in Earth’s Atmosphere at mid and high latitudes) project, which is an ESA supported collaborative study organized to investigate coupling associated with sudden stratospheric warmings and the possibility of involving Swarm data in these investigations. In this paper, the observations of a correlation between the PEARL meridional winds and sporadic-E, which takes place during the winter of 2018-2019 is described. The periodicity of the correlation evolves from 6 days in December 2018 to 3 days in January 2019. Possible mechanisms for these correlations is discussed. In addition, the extent to which the models simulate the dynamical environment observed over PEARL is examined.