Solar cycle, seasonal, and asymmetric dependencies of thermospheric mass density disturbances due to magnetospheric forcing

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Abstract. Short-term upper atmosphere variations due to magnetospheric forcing are very complex, and neither well understood nor capably modeled due to limited observations. In this paper, mass density variations from 10 years of GRACE observations (2003–2013) are isolated via the parameterization of annual, local solar time (LST), and solar cycle fluctuations using a principal component analysis (PCA) technique. The resulting residual disturbances are investigated in terms of magnetospheric drivers. The magnitude of high-frequency (δ < 10 d) disturbances reveals unexpected dependencies on the solar cycle, seasonal, and an asymmetric behavior with smaller amplitudes in June in the south polar region (SPR). This seasonal modulation might be related to the Russell–McPherron (RM) effect. Meanwhile, we find a similar pattern, although less pronounced, in the northern and equatorial regions. A possible cause of this latitudinal asymmetry might be the irregular shape of the Earth's magnetic field (with the north dip pole close to Earth's rotation axis, and the south dip pole far from that axis). After accounting for the solar cycle and seasonal dependencies by regression analysis to the magnitude of the high-frequency perturbations, the parameterization in terms of the disturbance geomagnetic storm-time index Dst shows the best correlation, whereas the geomagnetic variation Am index and merging electric field Em are the best predictors in terms of time delay. We test several mass density models, including JB2008, NRLMSISE-00, and TIEGCM, and find that they are unable to completely reproduce the seasonal and solar cycle trends found in this study, and show a clear overestimation of about 100 % during low solar activity periods.