Probing the analytical cancellation factor relation using Na lidar and nightglow data from the Andes Lidar Observatory

The cancellation factor (CF) is a model for the ratio between gravity wave perturbations in the airglow intensity to those in the ambient temperature and is necessary to estimate the momentum and energy flux and flux divergence of gravity waves in the airglow emissions. This study tests the CF model using T/W Na Lidar data and zenith nightglow observations of the OH and O(1S) emissions. The dataset analyzed was obtained during the campaigns carried out in 2015, 2016, and 2017 at the Andes Lidar Observatory (ALO) in Chile. We have used an empirical method to fit the analytical function that describes the CF for vertically propagating waves and compared the quantities through the ratio of airglow wave amplitude registered as a dominant event in the images to the wave amplitude in the lidar temperature. We show that the analytical relationship underestimates the observational results. We obtained good agreement with respect to the theoretical value for the O(1S) emission line. In contrast, the observational ...