Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2015
In the presence of a magnetic field, three types of magnetoatmospheric waves - magnetoacoustic mode, magnetogravitational mode, and hydromagnetic mode - can propagate in a stratified atmosphere, in contrast to the propagation of two types of atmospheric waves - acoustic mode and gravitational mode - in the absence of a magnetic field. The exact manner of propagation of the magnetoatmospheric wave is extremely complex, and most studies have been confined to certain specific circumstances, such as an isothermal atmosphere permeated by a uniform magnetic field (McLellan and Winterberg, 1968; Bel and Mein, 1971; Michalitsanos, 1973), and atmosphere in magnetohydrostatic equilibrium (Yu, 1965; Chen and Lykoudis, 1972) and the propagation across a density discontinuity (Stein, 1971).