Global and Meso-scale Thermospheric Neutral Wind Response to Geomagnetic Storm

Abstract:

This paper presents a case study of thermospheric response to the 5 April 2010 geomagnetic storm. The NCAR Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Electrodynamic General Circulation Model (TIMEGCM) is used to investigate thermospheric neutral wind variations during the storm, and the model results are validated through comparison with ground and space based observations. More specifically, we conduct detailed inter-comparison of the winds observed by scanning Doppler imagers (SDI) in Alaska with those derived from the TIMEGCM simulations in order to assess model's ability in reproducing the observed meso-scale wind field. The thermospheric winds obtained from the accelerometers on board the GOCE satellite are also used to validate the simulation results on a global scale. While globally the wind velocity tends to be smaller than ion drift velocity, locally the winds can exceed ion drifts and also blow in the different direction than the ions. We will discuss how the thermospheric winds affect the energetic coupling of the magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere system in terms of Joule heating and field-aligned currents.