The Doppler shift undergone by a single quasi-sinusoidal wave in a constant, stratified, mean shear background atmosphere is analytically and numerically considered. This wave does not encounter critical levels for the elementary cases here considered. The idealized picture intends to illustrate the zeroth order effect of a mean shear wind profile on the resulting shape of temperature and wind spectra. The trial of different vertical shear structures suggests that only the linear or quasilinear wind profiles are able to reproduce adequately the experimental spectral slopes. For a linear shear and different incident wavelengths, slope values near to -3 are found and the calculated spectra close resemble those observed from atmospheric data. ¿ 1998 American Geophysical Union