Identification

Title

Effects of the equatorial ionosphere anomaly on the interhemispheric circulation in the thermosphere

Abstract

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.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7348n0b

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

2016-03-01T00:00:00Z

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