Seasonal and Day-to-day Variations of Thermospheric Tides and Dynamo Fields Studied with a Long-term Whole Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupled Simulation

Abstract:

Day-to-day and longer variations of ionospheric electron density, which affect various space weather applications, are caused originally from the solar activity variations and the rotation of the sun as well as the lower atmospheric activity. For the latter source, atmospheric waves such as tides and planetary waves are generated in the moist convection, which propagate through the middle atmosphere affected by various dynamical processes such as their interactions with the mean zonal wind and other waves, and reach the lower thermosphere where they induce dynamo electric fields. According to the recent satellite and ground-based observations, the characteristics of tides and planetary waves in the lower thermosphere are becoming known more clearly, such as the seasonal and latitude variations of major tides, planetary wave-like oscillations, and irregular variations during stratospheric sudden warming, and so on. In this paper, we use a whole atmosphere-ionosphere coupled model called GAIA, and have carried out a simulation from 1996 to 2013 with realistic forcing from the lower atmosphere by nudging the meteorological reanalysis (JRA) into the model. By analyzing the long-term model data, we investigate how the tidal variability and planetary waves in the lower thermosphere produce the seasonal and day-to-day variations in the dynamo electric field as well as the origin of the variations in the lower and middle atmospheres.