Atmospheric gravity waves transport energy and momentum from a source region to the location of wave dissipation and are understood to greatly affect the thermal and dynamical structures of the upper atmosphere. Atmospheric gravity waves have been studied extensively on Earth but due to observational limitations the study of these waves in the atmospheres of other planets has been minimal. This work is composed of three different parts that study gravity waves in different planets' atmospheres.

In the Earth atmosphere the spectral characteristics of gravity waves reveal a remarkable universality with respect to time of day, location, topography, and altitude. The first study in this work utilizes the nearly 20,000 temperature profiles from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) radio occultation measurements to calculate the power spectral density for gravity waves on Mars and compares them to the observations and theories for the Earth atmosphere.

The second part of this work investigates the effects of gravity waves in the ionosphere of Jupiter. This work models a realistic ionosphere that maintains the chemistry and dynamics of multiple ion species in the presence of a propagating gravity wave. It is shown that a wave creates significant variations in the [special characters omitted] column density across a horizontal plane of Jupiter. It is argued that the [special characters omitted] thermal emission from Jupiter can be used to obtain observations of gravity waves in Jupiter's ionosphere that would provide new information about gravity wave parameters that are valuable in understanding their contribution to the atmospheric energetics at these altitudes.

The third part of this work modifies the gravity wave-ionosphere model for use on Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft has provided dozens of new electron density profiles of Saturn's ionosphere. Many of these profiles show sharp layering in the electron density profiles as well as a high degree of variability in the lower ionosphere. The model is used to assess the possibility that the layering and other structures are due to gravity waves and what parameters of waves are be required to reproduce these effects.