Identification

Title

Effect of vertical shear in the zonal wind on equatorial electrojet sidebands: An observational perspective using Swarm and ICON Data

Abstract

The wind dynamo in the ionosphere leads to differential motion of ions and electrons, which in turn sets up electric fields and currents. Observations show that daytime lower thermospheric horizontal winds have large vertical gradients. Numerical modeling conducted approximately 50 years ago demonstrated that the zonal wind shears in the ∼130–180 km altitude range can generate off‐equatorial relative minima (dips) in the daytime height‐integrated eastward current density, appearing as westward sidebands north and south of the equatorial electrojet (EEJ). This study observationally confirms this connection for the first time by combining Ionospheric CONnection explorer zonal wind profiles and Swarm latitudinal zonal currents. We demonstrate observationally that the magnitude of the EEJ sideband current is proportional to the strength of westward turning winds with altitude in the Pedersen conductivity dominated region. Additional numerical experiments explain the importance of wind shear in different altitude regions in generating the sideband current. This study contributes to the better understanding of the neutral wind effect on the local current generation.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7bk1hpn

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

2024-10-01T00:00:00Z

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