Project Details
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Short-term variability of the equatorial ionosphere and its association with planetary-scale waves

Subject Area Geophysics
Term from 2019 to 2025
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 416609110
 
Final Report Year 2023

Final Report Abstract

The primary goal of this project is to improve our understanding of the day-to-day variability, or “weather”, of the ionosphere, at altitudes of ca. 100−600 km. In particular, this project focuses on the ionospheric variability associated with globalscale atmospheric waves, such as planetary waves and atmospheric tides. Planetary waves have a period longer than a day and shorter than several weeks. Their ionospheric effects could make a contribution to the ionospheric day-to-day variability. We have found that there is often a “burst” of planetary-wave activity in the middle atmosphere (i.e., the neutral atmosphere just below the ionosphere, ca. 50−100 km) during sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events. The “Fourier-wavelet” technique has been developed to enable to identify planetary-wave bursts during SSWs. We have also found evidence of the planetary-wave effect on the ionosphere during SSWs. In particular, during the Antarctic SSW event of September 2019, ionospheric oscillations with a period of ~6 days are detected in various parameters, including the equatorial electrojet, zonal electric field, and F- region plasma densities, along with a strong quasi-6-day wave in the middle atmosphere. Besides the quasi-6-day wave, the equatorial Kelvin wave with a period of ~3 days plays an important role for the ionospheric dayto-day variability at low latitudes. Atmospheric tides have a period of a solar day (24h) and its harmonics (12h, 8h, …). Thus, they do not make a direct contribution to the ionospheric day-to-day variability. Nevertheless, the interaction of tides with planetary waves can lead to “secondary waves”. For instance, the interaction between the semidiurnal tide (12h) and quasi-6- day wave results in a pair of global-scale waves; one with a period of 11h and the other with a period of 13h. These secondary waves were found to be important for the ionospheric day-to-day variability observed during the September 2019 SSW event. As briefly highlighted above, the ionosphere is subject to atmospheric forcing by various global-scale waves. This project was able to identify the importance of planetary waves and their interaction with tides for the ionospheric day-to-day variability.

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