Whole Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupled Model (GAIA) for Space Weather Research

Space near the Earth, called geospace, is a highly complex system, consisting of the solar wind, the magnetosphere, the ionosphere, and the neutral atmosphere. Those regions have different physical characteristics with different temporal and spatial scales. In particular, the magnetosphere, the ionosphere, and the neutral atmosphere are strongly coupled with each other, and interaction between the regions is nonlinear and extremely complicated. Even within each region, there are strong interactions between physical processes with different temporal and spatial scales. Furthermore, the geospace environment significantly varies as electromagnetic energy and particles from the sun vary. In order to quantitatively understand such a complicated system, it is necessary to model the entire region by including all fundamental processes self-consistently. Various types of global numerical models of geospace have been constructed and used to study space weather disturbances in many institutions in the world. At the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) of Japan, a real-time solar wind model, magnetosphere model, and ionosphere-thermosphere model have been developed and used for daily space weather forecast. In addition to the effect of geospace disturbance on the upper atmosphere, recent observations of the ionosphere and the thermosphere have revealed that atmospheric waves generated in the lower atmosphere significantly influence the upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, and possibly the magnetosphere. In order to quantitatively study the effects of the lower atmosphere on the ionosphere, we have developed an atmosphere-ionosphere coupled model, which includes the whole neutral atmosphere and the ionosphere. The model is called GAIA (Ground-to-topside model of Atmosphere and Ionosphere for Aeronomy). Using GAIA, relationship between the ionosphere and the atmosphere is being studied. We plan to incorporate magnetospheric inputs to the polar ionosphere by using a magnetospheric model. We will report the status and future plan of the space environment study using GAIA.