Congratulations to Dr. Jian Du Caines, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy,

for her recent NASA award of $394,555 for the project entitled “Short-term Tidal Variability from the Troposphere to the Dynamo Region HSPH to ITM.” The department is extremely proud of her stellar achievements.

Her NASA proposal aims to investigate the short-term variability (on the order of 4 days) of atmospheric tides from about the troposphere to the ionospheric E-region dynamo region (20 – 110 km). Emphasis is on the migrating and non-migrating diurnal tides from westward propagating wavenumber 5 to eastward propagating wavenumber 5 (DW5 to DE5). Towards this goal, the project will synergistically employ an existing 30-year simulation (1979-2010) from the extended Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model (eCMAM) driven by reanalysis data and existing short-term tidal variability diagnostics from the SABER instrument on the TIMED satellite. The investigation will examine the statistical characteristics of the tidal short-term variability, how it varies as a function of year, season, latitude and altitude, develop a statistical empirical model of the tidal short-term variability, and quantify the relative importance of various causes for the short-term tidal variability and their respective atmospheric impacts.