Modeling shear flow and postsunset stability in the equatorial F region ionosphere

Details Modeling shear flow and postsunset stability in the equatorial F region ionosphere Modeling shear flow and postsunset stability in the equatorial F region ionosphere

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmsa51b1131h&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #SA51B-1131

Statistics

Computation

2411 Electric Fields (2712), 2415 Equatorial Ionosphere, 2437 Ionospheric Dynamics, 2439 Ionospheric Irregularities

Scientific paper

Sounding rocket and Altair radar data taken during the NASA EQUIS-II campaign on Kwajalein in August, 2004, are incorporated into a computational model of the electrodynamics of the low-latitude ionosphere. The purpose is to understand and quantify sources of the strong shear flow observed in the bottomside F region around and after sunset and to assess its influence on postsunset stability and the production of equatorial spread F. Possible sources of shear include 1) zonal electric fields on flux tubes with significant Hall conductivity, as are responsible for driving the equatorial electrojet, 2) zonal winds on flux tubes with significant Pedersen conductivity, as drive the E and F region dynamos, 3) vertical winds, a largely unknown quantity, and 4) vertical boundary currents forced from above or below the flux tube in question. The model solves for the electrostatic potential in three dimensions as a function of the background conductivity, background electric field, and the winds. We do not assume equipotential field lines but instead solve for the potential exactly using a multigridded solver. Shear flow may destabilize the postsunset ionosphere through a collisional shear instability related to electrostatic Kelvin Helmholtz [ Hysell and Kudeki, 2004]. Assessing the viability of the instability requires us to identify and rank in importance the sources of the shear.

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