BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
This article is part of the Research TopicHeliophysics Big Year: Education and Public Outreach ReportsView all 10 articles
Gravity Wave Zoo: Engaging Citizen Science to Analyze Atmospheric Gravity Wave Activity Over Poker Flat, Alaska
Provisionally accepted
Tyler Matthew Karasinski1*
Katrina Bossert2
Jessica Berkheimer1
Jessica Norrell1Sophie Rose Phillips1
Karina Muñoz1Pierre-Dominique Pautet3- 1School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, United States
- 2Arizona State University School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Tempe, United States
- 3Center for Atmospheric and Space Sciences, Utah State University, Logan, United States
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The Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere (MLT) is a critical atmospheric region ranging from 80-140 km in altitude. A main driver of momentum transport, density perturbations, temperature variations, and background winds in this region are atmospheric gravity waves (GWs), which are not well accounted for in many models of the thermosphere and near-space region. Additionally, global circulation models (GCMs) that do include GWs fail to resolve small-scale activity (<200 km). We utilize a hydroxyl (OH) airglow imager located in Poker Flat, Alaska (65°N 147°W) to leverage our active citizen science initiative, the Gravity Wave Zoo, expanding the breadth of available GW, aurora, and instability data over multiple seasons. We focus on a short-term study between 27 December 2023 and 4 February 2024 to statistically validate a subsample of this multi-year dataset, and report on recent Gravity Wave Zoo progress and accuracy, presenting a summary of overall participation and citizen classifications of GW, instability, and auroral events. We find citizen scientist classifications indicate GWs in 54.5%, aurora in 40.0%, and instabilities in 23.3% of subjects. We further propose future research directions enabled by this work and highlight the advantages of high temporal resolution data on the scale of weeks, months, and seasons.
Keywords: All-sky airglow imager, atmospheric gravity wave, aurora, citizen science, Hydroxyl airglow, instability, mesosphere and lower thermosphere, Zooniverse
Received: 01 Jul 2025; Accepted: 16 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Karasinski, Bossert, Berkheimer, Norrell, Phillips, Muñoz and Pautet. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tyler Matthew Karasinski
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