edu.ucar.opensky::articles:18409 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-26T02:54:17.259859 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7348n0b Effects of the equatorial ionosphere anomaly on the interhemispheric circulation in the thermosphere 2016-03-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7348n0b https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JA022169 Qian, Liying author Burns, Alan author Wang, Wenbin author Solomon, Stanley C. author Zhang, Y. author Hsu, V. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher We investigate the interhemispheric circulation at the solstices, in order to understand why O/N2 is larger in the northern hemisphere winter than in the southern hemisphere winter. Our studies reveal that the equatorial ionosphere anomaly (EIA) significantly impacts the summer-to-winter wind through plasma-neutral collisional heating, which changes the summer-to-winter pressure gradient, and ion drag. Consequently, the wind is suppressed in the summer hemisphere as it encounters the EIA but accelerates after it passes the EIA in the winter hemisphere. The wind then converges due to an opposing pressure gradient driven by Joule heating in auroral regions and produces large O/N2 at subauroral latitudes. This EIA effect is stronger near the December solstice than near the June solstice because the ionospheric annual asymmetry creates greater meridional wind convergence near the December solstice, which in turn produces larger O/N2 in the northern hemisphere winter than in the southern hemisphere winter. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2016 American Geophysical Union. None eng geoscientificInformation