Recent update of a whole atmosphere-ionosphere coupled model GAIA and its validation

Abstract:

The origins of variations and disturbances in the Earth’s upper atmosphere do not only come from the solar atmosphere, but also from the Earth’s lower atmosphere. Whole atmospheric models are nowadays widely used for studies of vertical atmospheric coupling. As one of such models, we have developed a whole atmosphere-ionosphere coupled model called GAIA to understand physics behind the observed phenomena, to analyze the origin of them, as well as to forecast upper atmospheric variations and disturbances as space weather purpose.

So far, we have validated climatological features of a long-term model run which used realistic inputs from meteorological reanalysis and solar EUV proxy, by comparing with ionospheric observations. We found some discrepancies of the simulation result from observations in some conditions. To improve the accuracy of model, we have updated the calculation schemes for chemical processes, energetics, parameterization, and so on. We also have introduced magnetospheric effects into the model, such as electrodynamics coupling with magnetosphere and particle precipitation. In this talk, we show several simulation results from the updated model and discuss its validation by comparison with observations.