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
Smith N
(2010)
Image-model coupling: application to an ionospheric storm
in Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics
Pokhotelov D
(2010)
GPS tomography in the polar cap: comparison with ionosondes and in situ spacecraft data
in GPS Solutions
Pengpan T
(2010)
A dual modality of cone beam CT and electrical impedance tomography for lung imaging
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Qiu W
(2010)
New iterative cone beam CT reconstruction software: parameter optimisation and convergence study.
in Computer methods and programs in biomedicine
Yin P
(2009)
Imaging of the Antarctic ionosphere: Experimental results
in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
Soleimani M
(2009)
FOUR-DIMENSIONAL ELECTRICAL CAPACITANCE TOMOGRAPHY IMAGING USING EXPERIMENTAL DATA
in Progress In Electromagnetics Research
Alfonsi L
(2009)
Corrigendum to: "Probing the high latitude ionosphere from ground-based observations: The state of current knowledge and capabilities during IPY (2007-2009)"
in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
Soleimani M
(2009)
Medical imaging and physiological modelling: linking physics and biology.
in Biomedical engineering online
Smith N
(2009)
Image-model coupling: a simple information theoretic perspective for image sequences
in Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics