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NASA scientists have tracked gravity waves
traveling thousands of miles across our atmosphere

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in concentric rings.

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Large storms can create these waves, which
grow and spread upward hundreds of miles above

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Earth's surface.

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The AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite
detected gravity waves in the troposphere

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and stratosphere 12 hours before a deadly
EF5 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, in 2013.

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On the instrument's next pass, 11 hours later,
it detected even stronger waves.

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We pull up 250 miles to the ionosphere, where
the waves can be observed by GPS satellites.

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Here, gravity waves are shown in greens and
yellows, like ripples in a pond.

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The waves and tornado were both produced by
a long-lived storm system.

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Understanding the spread of gravity waves
improves global weather forecasting

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and space weather forecasting.