Identification

Title

Energy transport in the thermosphere during the solar storms of April 2002

Abstract

The dramatic solar storm events of April 2002 deposited a large amount of energy into the Earth's upper atmosphere, substantially altering the thermal structure, the chemical composition, the dynamics, and the radiative environment. We examine the flow of energy within the thermosphere during this storm period from the perspective of infrared radiation transport and heat conduction. Observations from the SABER instrument on the TIMED satellite are coupled with computations based on the ASPEN thermospheric general circulation model to assess the energy flow. The dominant radiative response is associated with dramatically enhanced infrared emission from nitric oxide at 5.3 mu m from which a total of similar to 7.7 x 10(23) ergs of energy are radiated during the storm. Energy loss rates due to NO emission exceed 2200 Kelvin per day. In contrast, energy loss from carbon dioxide emission at 15 mm is only similar to 2.3% that of nitric oxide. Atomic oxygen emission at 63 mu m is essentially constant during the storm. Energy loss from molecular heat conduction may be as large as 3.8% of the NO emission. These results confirm the natural thermostat'' effect of nitric oxide emission as the primary mechanism by which storm energy is lost from the thermosphere below 210 km.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d74f1rh2

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2005-12-15T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact