The process of propagation and disintegration of long low-frequency nonlinear acoustic-gravity waves into the upper atmosphere is investigated. One spectral wave mode is considered, for which an approximate nonlinear Korteweg–de Vries–Burgers equation is derived using the formulated version of the variational principle for a liquid layer. The coefficients of the derived equation depend on the height. The issue of wave destruction into smaller-scale solitary waves is investigated in the work. The conditions for wave destruction are written out and formulas for estimating the scales of secondary soliton waves formed during the disintegration of the primary wave are written out. It is shown that wave destruction can occur only in certain layers determined by the vertical structure of the wave.
Kshevetskii et al. (Wed,) studied this question.