Global Distribution of the Thermospheric Total Mass Density Derived from CHAMP

Details Global Distribution of the Thermospheric Total Mass Density Derived from CHAMP Global Distribution of the Thermospheric Total Mass Density Derived from CHAMP

Dec 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004agufmsa23a0387l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2004, abstract #SA23A-0387

Other

2415 Equatorial Ionosphere, 2427 Ionosphere/Atmosphere Interactions (0335), 0300 Atmospheric Composition And Structure, 0358 Thermosphere: Energy Deposition

Scientific paper

A global distribution of the thermospheric total mass density is derived from the high-accuracy accelerometer on board of the CHAMP satellite with good temporal and spatial coverage. It shows two interesting features. One is the anomalous distribution at low latitudes. Instead of maximizing at the dayside equator, the thermospheric density shows maxima at about 20øª-25øª latitude on both sides of the geomagnetic equator between 11-17 MLT. This distribution resembles fairly well the equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA), thus indicating strong magnetic control of the thermospheric mass density via ionosphere-thermosphere coupling. The thermospheric density shows a secondary maximum at the nightside equator shortly before midnight, in reminiscence of the well known thermospheric Midnight Temperature Maximum (MTM). Another feature to notice is that no well-defined density cells can be identified in high latitudes at the altitude of 400 km, thus showing that the cellular structure recognized by the NCAR TGCM model at 120 - 300 km does not necessarily extend to higher altitudes. A comparison between observations and the MSIS90 model predictions shows that although the model describes the general structure of the observed density reasonably well, it misses the double peaks at low-latitudes completely. This causes an underestimation of the total mass density by 15-20% in the crest region. At high latitudes, an underestimation of 20-30% occurs in the midnight sector and the cusp region. The agreement between observations and predictions is quite good outside these localized areas, with only ~5% difference on average during quiet periods.

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