Identification

Title

Climate changes in the upper atmosphere: Contributions by the changing greenhouse gas concentrations and Earth's magnetic field from the 1960s to 2010s

Abstract

Previous studies have established the importance of the increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in causing trends in the thermosphere and ionosphere (T-I). Recent work indicates that the changing Earth's magnetic field is also important. We conduct whole atmosphere model simulations to examine T-I trends driven by these two drivers and their relative importance. We found that, (1) trends in the T-I, driven by either of the two drivers, exhibited significant latitudinal and longitudinal variability; (2) in the thermosphere, trends were predominantly driven by the GHG driver except that the magnetic field driver played a small role in the neutral temperature trend (similar to 25%) in some regions mainly in the longitude sector similar to 120 degrees W-20 degrees E. The magnetic field driver played a more important role in the ionosphere in the longitude sector similar to 120 degrees W-20 degrees E. In this longitude sector, the two drivers were comparable in driving the trends of hmF2, NmF2, and electron temperature; the relative importance of the two drivers to the ion temperature trend additionally depends on altitude, with the GHG driver being the dominant driver at lower altitudes (similar to 200-320 km), and the two drivers becoming comparable above; (3) although the magnetic field driver is important in the longitude sector similar to 120 degrees W-20 degrees E, it drove both negative and positive trends in roughly equal amounts, consequently, its contributions to the global average trends in the T-I are negligible.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d71839wq

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

2021-03-01T00:00:00Z

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