Tide-Kelvin Wave Interactions in the Tropical Ionosphere and Thermosphere: An ICON Perspective
Abstract
Recent observations and modeling have established that atmospheric tides and 2-5 day period ultra-fast Kelvin waves (UFKW) serve to couple the dynamics of the tropical troposphere to that of the ionosphere and thermosphere (IT). More limited evidence suggests that nonlinear interactions between UFKW and tides will (a) modify the amplitudes of the primary waves and (b) produce secondary waves (SW) that participate in this coupling and add to the spatial-temporal complexity of the response. In terms of science background, the broad objectives of our present research are to answer the following questions: What are the relative importance and aggregate effects of tides, UFKW and SW in producing the aforementioned coupling? How are these effects manifested in hmF2, NmF2, [O]/[N2] ratio, E-region winds, ExB drifts and field-aligned neutral winds in the F-region, and what do these tell us about the underlying physical mechanisms? These questions will be answered in the context of outputs from fully-sampled and ICON-sampled TIME-GCM/MERRA2009-forced TIE-GCM numerical experiments that isolate the effects of tides, UFKW and SW, and complementary analyses of ICON/MIGHTI measurements of neutral winds and ICON/IVM measurements of F-region plasma drifts. The scope of this presentation is very specifically limited, however, to the relationship between neutral winds and plasma drifts in the context of UFKW-tide interactions as revealed in the model experiments and measurements.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMSA11A..03F
- Keywords:
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- 0355 Thermosphere: composition and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 3369 Thermospheric dynamics;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 2437 Ionospheric dynamics;
- IONOSPHEREDE: 2481 Topside ionosphere;
- IONOSPHERE