Most people probably don't think about the atmosphere as being an ocean of fluid. Most people probably also don't realize or remember that "fluid" includes both liquid and gas. So, it might come as a surprise to most people that there are waves in the atmosphere. It stands to reason that any body of fluid would experience waves arising from disturbances within and without the body. Couple this with the well-known turbulence in the atmosphere and a host of other fluidic phenomenae we experience every day in the atmosphere, and it becomes clear that there must be waves. Well, thanks to a new distributed radar antenna system, scientists are able to monitor and create images of the atmosphere much more quickly and in three dimensions, which led to actually seeing images of these waves. And they are WAVES! Hundres of miles long, they move at very high speed, as much as half the speed of sound. Check out the story:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/04/atmosphere-waves.html
