An investigation of the mid-latitude structure of geomagnetic storm effects in the thermosphere-ionosphere

摘要

We concluded the first-stage analysis of the massive amounts of information available from the generic storm simulations. A post-run processor that calculates and plots differences between storm and reference runs has been used to identify storm effects and to reveal the causative mechanisms. A coherent, global picture of the evolution of storm effects in both the thermosphere and the ionosphere has been proposed and published. This scenario accounts for the neutral dynamics and composition, and for the ionospheric features present in the theoretical simulations; it also offers simple explanations for observed patterns of response to geomagnetic storms. We have developed a new post-run processor capability to analyze the time evolution of energy density at different latitudes.