Ionosphere-thermosphere space weather issues

Abstract

Weather disturbances in the ionosphere-thermosphere system can have a detrimental effect on both ground-based and space-based systems. Because of this impact and because our field has matured, it is now appropriate to develop specification and forecast models, with the aim of eventually predicting the occurrence, duration, and intensity of weather effects. As part of the new National Space Weather Program, the CEDAR community will focus on science issues concerning space weather, and this tutorial/review is an expanded version of a tutorial presentation given at the recent CEDAR annual meeting. The tutorial/review provides a brief discussion of weather disturbances and features, the causes of weather, and the status of weather modeling. The features and disturbances discussed include plasma patches, boundary and auroral blobs, sun-aligned polar cap arcs, the effects of traveling convection vortices and SAID events, the lifetime of density structures, sporadic E and intermediate layers, spread F and equatorial plasma bubbles, geomagnetic storms and substorms, traveling ionospheric disturbances (TID's), and the effects of tides and gravity waves propagating from the lower atmosphere. The tutorial/review is only intended to provide an overview of some of the important scientific issues concerning ionospheric-thermospheric weather, with the emphasis on the ionosphere. Tutorials on thermospheric and magnetospheric weather issues are given in companion papers.