Identification

Title

Thermospheric damping response to sheath-enhanced geospace storms

Abstract

We show evidence that solar wind density enhancements and pressure pulses can lead to intense low-energy particle precipitation and an associated, but unexpected, damping of thermospheric density response. Ground-based indices, used as proxies for thermospheric energy deposition, fail to capture these interactions in forecasting algorithms. Superposed epoch comparison of a group of poorly specified neutral density storms suggests an event-chain of multi-hour, pre-storm solar wind density enhancement, followed by solar wind dynamic pressure pulses that trigger excess low-energy particle flux to the upper atmosphere; enhanced production of thermospheric Nitric Oxide (NO) by precipitating particles and storm heating; NO infrared cooling and damping of the thermosphere; and mis-forecast of neutral density. In the control storms, these features are absent or muted. We discuss the roles of solar wind pre-conditioning and solar cycle dependency in the problem storms. These problem neutral-density storms reveal an element of "geo-effectiveness" that highlights competition between hydrodynamic aspects of the solar wind and other interplanetary drivers.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7ww7jjm

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

2013-04-16T00:00:00Z

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