SA41B-4067:
Study of Ionospheric Storms Using Global Assimilative Ionospheric Models
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Xiaoqing Pi1, Mark Butala1, Anthony J Mannucci2, Brian D Wilson2, Attila Komjathy1, Chunming Wang3, Gary Rosen3, Robert Walter Schunk4, Ludger Scherliess4, Vincent Eccles4, Larry C Gardner5, Jan Josef Sojka4 and Lie Zhu4, (1)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (2)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (3)University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (4)Utah State University, Logan, UT, United States, (5)Utah State Univ, Logan, UT, United States
Abstract:
Under the development of the Multimodel Ensemble Prediction System (MEPS) for ionosphere-thermosphere-electrodynamics, several global assimilative ionospheric models (GAIMs) have been applied to studies of ionospheric storms during space weather disturbances. The GAIMs are physics-based four-dimensional models and capable of assimilating a variety of ground-based and spaceborne observations on global scales. In this presentation, we will discuss various data assimilation techniques and data sources used in GAIMs to capture ionospheric perturbations. The results of GAIM studies of ionospheric disturbances during the April 2011 and March 2013 geomagnetic storms, respectively, will be presented. The two storms were driven by space weather perturbations caused by high speed stream (HSS) and coronal mass ejection (CME) events, respectively. With distinguished solar wind characteristics these two types of Sun-Earth connection events caused different variations in the magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere system. In the assimilative ionospheric modeling, GPS data from hundreds of globally-distributed ground stations and six COSMIC satellites are assimilated into GAIMs. Both storm-time and quiet-time ionosphere have been reproduced to reveal disturbance patterns and to help investigate the differences in the M-I-T coupling processes driven by the two types of storms.
