Research Highlights

Katherine Davidson, Gang Lu, Mark Conde present a quantitative assessment of the thermospheric forcing and its dependence on high-latitude driving. Due to its coupling with the ionosphere via ion-neutral collisions, the simulated neutral wind and the corresponding thermospheric forcing from Global Circulation Models (GCMs) are highly dependent on the model's high-latitude ionospheric input. 

Liying Qian, and Kalevi Mursula use model simulations and observations to examine how well the F10.7 and F30 solar radio fluxes have represented solar forcing in the thermosphere during the last 60 years of weakening solar activity. 

Published: November 2024. Sarah Gibson, V. P. Moraes Filho, V. Uritsky, B. J. Thompson, and C. E. DeForest demonstrate how SynCOM can be employed to assess the precision and performance of two different flow tracking methods. By providing a ground-truth based on observational data, we highlight the importance of SynCOM in confirming observational standards for detecting coronal flows.

Published: 05 November 2024. Mausumi Dikpati, Peter A Gilman, Breno Raphaldini, Scott W McIntosh improve on the 2020 MHD Rossby wave model to include a hydrodynamic turbulent convection zone (CZ). This new approach enabled them to examine how MHD Rossby waves generated in the tachocline might diffuse upward through the CZ to the solar surface.

Published: December 2024. Sarah Gibson, et al. present an analysis of a CME and its interior structure observed during the seventh solar encounter of the Parker Solar Probe, utilizing the data from its Wide-Field Imager for Solar PRobe (WISPR) heliospheric imager. They observe a complex CME structure consisting of non-concentric nested rings, which we argue is a signature of the embedded helical magnetic flux rope (MFR) of the CME.

Kun Wu, Liying Qian, Wenbin Wang, Xuguang Cai, and Joseph Mclnerney conduct an in-depth analysis of Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model-eXtended (WACCM-X) simulations to examine physical mechanisms of the formation and evolution of an equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) merging phenomenon during a storm on November 4th, 2021. 

In this publication, Roberto Casini and Alfred de Wijn expand on their previous study of the impact of atmospheric seeing on polarization cross-talk, and show how the formalism that was developed in that work can be applied to treat the case of spatial modulators of polarization. 

Han-Li Liu observes that nitric oxide (NO) is one of the most important cooling agent in the thermosphere and an important species for the energy balance of the upper atmosphere and the chemistry and dynamics of the middle atmosphere. 

N. M. Pedatella, K. Wu, L. Qian, and Q. Gan use WACCM-X to investigate the impact of the upward propagating migrating diurnal (DW1) and semidiurnal (SW2) tides on the seasonal variability in the ionosphere and thermosphere. The results demonstrate that the upward propagating DW1 and SW2 both have significant effects on the ionosphere and thermosphere, including influencing the seasonal variability.