Identification

Title

Assessment of using field-aligned currents to drive the global ionosphere thermosphere model: A case study for the 2013 St Patrickâ€™s Day geomagnetic storm

Abstract

In this study, field-aligned currents (FACs) obtained from the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment data set have been used to specify the high-latitude electric potential in the Global Ionosphere Thermosphere Model (GITM). The advantages and challenges of the FAC-driven simulation are investigated based on a series of numerical experiments and data-model comparisons for the 2013 St Patrick's Day geomagnetic storm. It is found that the cross-track ion drift measured by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites can be well reproduced in the FAC-driven simulation when the electron precipitation pattern obtained from Assimilative Mapping of Ionospheric Electrodynamics (AMIE) technique is used in GITM. It is also found that including the neutral wind dynamo properly is very important when using FACs to derive the high-latitude electric field. Without the neutral wind dynamo, the cross-polar-cap potential and hemispheric integrated Joule heating could be underestimated by more than 20%. Moreover, the FAC-driven simulation is able to well reproduce the ionospheric response to the geomagnetic storm in the American sector. However, the FAC-driven simulation yields relatively larger data-model discrepancies compared to the AMIE-driven GITM simulation. This may result from inaccurate Joule heating estimations in the FAC-driven simulation caused by the inconsistency between the FAC and electron precipitation patterns. This study indicates that the FAC-driven technique could be a useful tool for studying the coupled ionosphere and thermosphere system provided that the FACs and electron precipitation patterns can be accurately specified.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7r2155b

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

2022-09-01T00:00:00Z

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