Large winds and wind shears caused by the nonlinear interactions between gravity waves and tidal backgrounds in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere

A two-dimensional nonlinear numerical model was used to simulate large winds (≥ 100 m s^-1) and wind shears (≥ 40 m s^-1 km^-1) in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) that are caused by the interaction between gravity waves (GWs) and migrating tidal background. By varying the wavelengths of GWs and the phases of diurnal and semidiurnal tides, 64 numerical experiments were performed. Our numerical experiments indicate that both migrating diurnal and semidiurnal tides strongly modulate the occurrence of GW breaking, and the resulted large winds and wind shears. The simulated large winds and wind shears are in good agreement with those from the rocket-sounding chemical release measurements. Moreover, the occurrence of large wind shears highly depends on the phases of migrating tides in local time, which is in agreement with the reported lidar observations. The local time dependence of large wind shears is mainly attributed to the filtering and/or hindering effects of diurnal and semidiurnal tidal winds on GWs. Our simulation reveals that the nonlinear interactions between GWs breaking and the migrating diurnal and semidiurnal tides may play an important role in driving the large winds and wind shears in the MLT region and their local time dependence.