Identification

Title

Thermospheric hydrogen response to increases in greenhouse gases

Abstract

We investigated thermospheric hydrogen response to increase in greenhouse gases and the dependence of this response to solar activity, using a global mean version of the National Center for Atmospheric Research Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere-Electrodynamics General Circulation Model. We separately doubled carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) to study the influence of temperature and changes to source species for hydrogen. Our results indicate that both CO2 cooling and CH4 changes to the source species for hydrogen lead to predicted increases in the upper thermospheric hydrogen density. At 400 km, hydrogen increases ~30% under solar maximum and ~25% under solar minimum responding to doubling of CH4, indicating that hydrogen response to the source variation due to CH4 increase is relatively independent of solar activity. On the other hand, hydrogen response to doubling of CO2 highly depends on solar activity. At 400 km, doubling of CO2 results in an ~7% hydrogen increase at solar maximum, whereas it is ~25% at solar minimum. Consequently, at solar maximum, the predicted ~40% increase in atomic hydrogen in the upper thermosphere is primarily due to the source variation as a result of doubling of CH4, whereas at solar minimum, both cooling due to doubling of CO2 and the source variation due to doubling of CH4 have commensurate effects, resulting in an approximate 50% increase in the modeled upper thermospheric hydrogen.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7k35wbk

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

2016-04-01T00:00:00Z

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