Comet Calendar

Multi-scale Ionospheric and Thermospheric Disturbances During Geomagnetically Active Times

The upper atmosphere, 100-600 km above the ground, is constantly under the influence of the solar wind and magnetosphere forcing. During geomagnetically active times, a large amount of energy is deposited at high latitudes through magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling and causes substantial disturbances in both neutrals and plasma globally. These disturbances include but not limited to enhanced neutral density at low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite altitudes, which strongly affects satellite operation; complex plasma structures, which may impact satellite communication and navigation; and intensified geomagnetically induced currents (GICs), which can cause damage and disruption to power distribution networks. Understanding and being able to predict the active-time variability of the upper atmosphere is crucial to mitigate the above-mentioned risks. This talk presents recent progress in modeling the active-time ionospheric and thermospheric disturbances. Observations and simulations of large-scale traveling atmospheric/ionospheric disturbances (LSTADs/LSTIDs) during a substorm event will be discussed. Model experiments show that ion convection and particle precipitation have comparable contributions to the magnitudes of LSTADs and LSTIDs. The ionospheric and thermospheric response to the multi-scale geomagnetic forcing derived from high-resolution radar and all-sky imager observations will be discussed as well. The observation-based forcing are found to have a strong meso-scale (<500 km) component, and our simulations show that these meso-scale forcing can cause prominent structures with notable magnitudes in upper atmospheric disturbances.

Sciences Building (SCI), 3.214A
800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson, Texas 75080-3021

Natural Sciences & Mathematics

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