DATA ASSIMILATION FOR THE STUDY OF MAGNETOSPHERE-IONOSPHERE-ATMOSPHERE COUPLING
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bath
Department Name: Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Abstract
State-of-the-art ionospheric imaging techniques use Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite data. In a similar manner to medical imaging, where the patient is examined by X-rays, in ionospheric imaging the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) is examined by radio waves. The next big step for ionospheric imaging is to combine it with models of the ionosphere. The reason to do this is to discover the underlying physics, which we cannot do very well by just looking at the images. We need to link the images to models of winds, solar radiation and electric fields in order to understand what causes the upper atmospheric environment to behave as it does during extreme events called storms. These are not the weather storms we are familiar with but rather these space-weather storms are caused by the bombardment of the outer realms of the atmosphere with particles and radiation from the Sun. The mathematics we need to link the measurements to the models is called data assimilation. Data assimilation has already been strikingly successful in meteorology. The data assimilation to be developed under this grant is for much higher up in the atmosphere (above 100 km) and will be used to investigate the coupling between the neutral and ionized atmosphere and to determine the relationships between ionosphere-atmosphere dynamics and magnetosphere dynamics.
Publications
Burston R
(2010)
Turbulent times in the northern polar ionosphere?
in Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
Benton C
(2011)
Isolating the multipath component in GNSS signal-to-noise data and locating reflecting objects
in Radio Science
Alfonsi L
(2011)
GPS scintillation and TEC gradients at equatorial latitudes in April 2006
in Advances in Space Research
Prikryl P
(2011)
Interhemispheric comparison of GPS phase scintillation at high latitudes during the magnetic-cloud-induced geomagnetic storm of 5-7 April 2010
in Annales Geophysicae
Spencer P
(2011)
Imaging of 3-D plasmaspheric electron density using GPS to LEO satellite differential phase observations
in Radio Science
Rose J
(2011)
The use of ionospheric tomography and elevation masks to reduce the overall error in single-frequency GPS timing applications
in Advances in Space Research
Alfonsi L
(2011)
Bipolar climatology of GPS ionospheric scintillation at solar minimum
in Radio Science
Muella M
(2011)
Tomographic imaging of the equatorial and low-latitude ionosphere over central-eastern Brazil
in Earth, Planets and Space
Yin P
(2011)
Demonstration of the use of the Doppler Orbitography and Radio positioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) measurements to validate GPS ionospheric imaging
in Advances in Space Research