The Interpretation of Wavelengths and Periods as Measured from Atmospheric Balloons

Transformations that take into account the characteristics of balloon motion and wave propagation to infer the “real” wavelengths and frequencies from the “apparent” ones measured during sounding are derived. To estimate the differences that may arise in the observations of internal gravity waves, a statistical relation between their wavelength and period recently found from theory and experiment is applied. It is shown that it may not be possible to determine from each apparent datum a unique real value, because up to four different transformations may be applicable for each experimental datum of wavelength or frequency. However, under certain conditions this ambiguity can be removed. The omission of the appropriate transformation may lead one to seriously misinterpret the data.