Identification

Title

Thermospheric density: An overview of temporal and spatial variations

Abstract

Neutral density shows complicated temporal and spatial variations driven by external forcing of the thermosphere/ionosphere system, internal dynamics, and thermosphere and ionosphere coupling. Temporal variations include abrupt changes with a time scale of minutes to hours, diurnal variation, multi-day variation, solar-rotational variation, annual/semiannual variation, solar-cycle variation, and long-term trends with a time scale of decades. Spatial variations include latitudinal and longitudinal variations, as well as variation with altitude. Atmospheric drag on satellites varies strongly as a function of thermospheric mass density. Errors in estimating density cause orbit prediction error, and impact satellite operations including accurate catalog maintenance, collision avoidance for manned and unmanned space flight, and re-entry prediction. In this paper, we summarize and discuss these density variations, their magnitudes, and their forcing mechanisms, using neutral density data sets and modeling results. The neutral density data sets include neutral density observed by the accelerometers onboard the Challenging Mini-satellite Payload (CHAMP), neutral density at satellite perigees, and global-mean neutral density derived from thousands of orbiting objects. Modeling results are from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) thermosphere-ionosphere-electrodynamics general circulation model (TIE-GCM), and from the NRLMSISE-00 empirical model.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7028s7h

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

2012-06-01T00:00:00Z

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