Identification

Title

The effect of periodic variations of thermospheric density on CHAMP and GRACE orbits

Abstract

In this paper thermosphere densities observed by the CHAMP and GRACE satellites and their orbital parameters are used to investigate the effect of periodic oscillations in thermospheric densities (7 - 27 days) caused by solar rotation and periodic magnetic activity on satellite orbits during 2003 - 2005. Two new results are obtained in this study. First, the response of the mean radius of the satellite orbit per revolution (MRPR) to the oscillations in the mean atmospheric density per revolution (MDPR) increased linearly with oscillation periods. Therefore, MRPR had a strong oscillation near the 27 day period. However, it had no obvious 7, 9, and 13.5 day oscillations, although there were strong oscillations at the same periods in MDPR. Second, there was a phase difference of inline equation between the oscillations of MRPR and MDPR. The phases of the oscillations in MRPR led the phases of the variations in MDPR. The correlation coefficient between the 27 day oscillations in MRPR and those in MDPR was 0.83 with a phase difference of -6.8 days for CHAMP; the correlation for GRACE was 0.67 with a phase difference of -6.4 days. The amplitudes of the oscillations in MRPR of CHAMP were larger than those of GRACE because GRACE had a higher orbit than CHAMP. These features are in good agreement with our theoretical analysis.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d77w6crz

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

2011-02-17T00:00:00Z

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