Variability of the diurnal tide in the equatorial MLT

For many years the amplitude of the diurnal tide in the mesosphere, lower thermosphere (MLT) has been known to be deeply modulated over a wide range of time scales. These time scales range from a few days, to seasonal dependencies, and up to interannual time scales. The causes of the variability have remained elusive, but can fall into two main categories. The first is source variability, the variability arising from variations in water vapor heating, latent heating, and ozone heating. The second potential cause is interaction of the diurnal tide with the background, including the effects of the zonal mean structure, planetary waves, gravity waves and turbulence. In this paper we focus on the second category of tidal variability. Measurements at the equator allow us to focus on particular mechanisms of tidal variability. We are close to the main sources driving the tide, equatorial convection and water vapor heating. The equatorial mean zonal winds are relatively weak so we also avoid the filtering of the tide due to the midlatitude jets. Although we cannot observe wave–mean and wave–wave interactions directly, a decadal climatology allows to diagnose how much tidal–background interaction might contribute to tidal variability. We make use of data from the SABER instrument, providing continuous temperature measurements and augment these with some equatorial radar wind observations. Two-month averages of SABER temperatures are required to unambiguously define migrating tidal temperature fields which confine our study mainly for variability on a seasonal time scale or longer. The temperature tide has a repeatable seasonal variation that is shown to stem directly from the sources and which can be observed as low as tropopause heights. Refraction and reflection are found to play an important role in the vertical structure of the tide and found to influence temporal variability in both amplitude and phase when the tide propagates into the mesosphere. An anti-symmetric migrating tidal mode was found to be present during some seasons of the year above 80km.