Thermospheric Investigations Using Temperature Measurements by NASA’s GOLD Mission
One of the prime datasets from NASA’s GOLD mission is the middle thermospheric temperature. As part of the daylit scan sequence, GOLD obtains high-resolution spectra of the Earth’s disk over American longitudes in the 132-164 nm wavelength range. The spectral intensities and bandwidth of the nitrogen LBH band emissions in this wavelength range can be used to deduce information about the thermosphere and its response to geophysical forcing. These emissions can be used to retrieve middle thermospheric temperature on the disk (Tdisk), a key parameter for space-weather investigations. In this presentation, we’ll specifically present results on: (a) how Tdisk varies with the magnitude of geomagnetic storms, (b) how Tdisk can be used to retrieve thermospheric neutral densities, and (c) how Tdisk can be used to recognize the optimum solar proxies for thermosphere-ionosphere studies.
Dr. Fazlul Laskar is currently a Research Scientist-2 at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), University of Colorado Boulder, USA. He did his PhD in Space Physics at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India in the year 2014. After PhD he worked at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Kuhlungsborn, Germany for 4 years as a research scientist, mainly investigating middle atmospheric dynamics. From March 2019 he has been working at LASP, University of Colorado Boulder for the NASA GOLD mission. His research interest is mainly on the atmosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere variability due to forcing from above and below with a particular emphasis on space weather studies using whole atmosphere data assimilation. He has more than 33 peer reviewed publications to his credit.