The lower atmospheric forcing effects on the ionosphere are particularly evident during extreme meteorological events known as sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs).
In February, 2018, a specialized engineering team, led by principal investigator Dr. Qian Wu, traveled from Boulder, Colorado to a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas.
Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) simulations are used to investigate the short-term (30-day) temporal variability in the mid- and high-latitude Southern Hemisphere mesosphere.
Solomon & Qian show that solar minima are not all the same, and may have implications for understanding the Sun during the extended periods of very low activity known as “grand minima” that have sometimes occurred in the past, the best known of which was the Maunder Minimum during 1650–1700.
In this work, Kedeng Zhang, Wenbin Wang and others, investigate the longitudinal patterns of thermospheric zonal winds (~400 km) and their seasonal and solar activity dependence.
For the first time, a new module enables Jing Liu and others to investigate the intimate coupling between polar turbulence electron heating and thermosphere disturbances in the context of a first principle, self-consistent model.
Jenna Samra and Philip Judge identify two new emission features observed during the 21st August 2017 total solar eclipse by a novel spectrometer, AIR-Spec, flown at 14.3 km altitude aboard the NCAR Gulfstream V aircraft.
View videos of past colloquia