Identification

Title

Climate Change in the Thermosphere and Ionosphere from the Early Twentieth Century to Early Twenty-First Century Simulated by the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model - eXtended

Alternative title(s)

d583122

Abstract

<p>Motivated by numerous lower atmosphere climate model hindcast simulations, we performed simulations of the earth's atmosphere from the surface up through the thermosphere-ionosphere to reveal for the first time the century scale changes in the upper atmosphere from the 1920s through the 2010s using the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model - eXtended (WACCM-X v. 2.1). We impose solar minimum conditions to get a clear indication of the effects of the long-term forcing from greenhouse gas increases and changes of the Earth's magnetic field and to avoid the requirement for careful removal of the 11-year solar cycle as in some previous studies using observations and models. These previous studies have shown greenhouse gas effects in the upper atmosphere but what has been missing is the time evolution with actual greenhouse gas increases throughout the last century, including the period of less than 5% increase prior to the space age and the transition to the over 25% increase in the latter half of the 20th century. Neutral temperature, density, and ionosphere changes are close to those reported in previous studies, and we find a high correlation of continuous changes over this past century between carbon dioxide and thermosphere neutral temperature due the shorter adjustment time of the upper atmosphere to greenhouse gas changes relative to the years to decades in the lower atmosphere. Consequently, WACCM-X future projections can provide valuable insight into what is to come in the entire atmosphere under future scenarios of greenhouse gas changes and mitigation efforts.</p> <p>The model output covers the first 6 years of each decade from the 1920s to the 2010s. The horizontal resolution is 1.9 x 2.5 latitude x longitude and 1/4 scale height in the vertical.</p>

Resource type

dataset

Resource locator

https://gdex.ucar.edu/datasets/d583122/

protocol: https

name: Dataset Description

description: Related Link

function: information

https://gdex.ucar.edu/datasets/d583122/dataaccess/

protocol: https

name: Data Access

description: Related Link

function: download

Unique resource identifier

code

codeSpace

Dataset language

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

dataset

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2021-03-30

Keyword set

keyword value

CLIMATE MODELS > CLIMATE MODELS

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2025-10-03

Keyword set

keyword value

EARTH SCIENCE > CLIMATE INDICATORS > SUN-EARTH INTERACTIONS > SUNSPOT ACTIVITY

EARTH SCIENCE > HUMAN DIMENSIONS > ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS > GREENHOUSE GASES

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2025-10-03

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

1920-01

End position

2015-12

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-11-02

Frequency of update

notPlanned

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

organisation name

email address

datahelp@ucar.edu

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange

email address

datahelp@ucar.edu

web address

https://gdex.ucar.edu

name: NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange

description: The Geoscience Data Exchange (GDEX), managed by the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) at NSF NCAR, contains a large collection of meteorological, atmospheric composition, and oceanographic observations, and operational and reanalysis model outputs, integrated with NSF NCAR High Performance Compute services to support atmospheric and geosciences research.

function: download

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-10-09T01:32:07Z

Metadata language