Planetary and gravity wave activity in the equatorial lower stratosphere as seen by ultra-long duration balloons

In the late southern winter and early spring of 1998, the Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES, the French space agency) released six super-pressure balloons from a location in Ecuador, South America. The balloons, which flew in the lower stratosphere, provided a dataset of high interest. In this paper, we briefly describe the payloads and flights, and present selected results from the data analysis.