HR: 1340h
AN: SA43A-1065    [Abstracts]
TI: Looking at the November 20, 2003 super storm with TIMED/GUVI: Comparison with the TIMEGCM
AU: Meier, R R
EM: meier@uap2.nrl.navy.mil
AF: George Mason University, School of Computational Sciences 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030 United States
AU: * Crowley, G
EM: gcrowley@swri.org
AF: Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Rd, San Antonio, TX 78238 United States
AU: Strickland, D J
EM: dstrick@cpi.com
AF: Computational Physics Inc., 8001 Braddock Rd Suite 210, Springfield, VA 22151 United States
AU: Christensen, A
EM: andy.christensen@ngc.com
AF: Northrop Grumman Space Technology, One Space Park, Redondo Beach, CA 90278 United States
AU: Paxton, L
EM: larry.paxton@jhuapl.edu
AF: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723 United States
AU: Morrison, D
EM: danny.morrison@jhuapl.edu
AF: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723 United States
AB: During October and November 2003, Earth was subjected to record-class solar flares and geo-effective coronal mass ejections that caused massive perturbations of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. Observations of the storm effects are available from the NASA TIMED satellite. Among the four TIMED instruments is the Global Ultra Violet Imager (GUVI), a far ultraviolet (FUV) spectrograph that can be operated in imaging or spectrograph modes. GUVI produces images of the far ultraviolet (FUV) dayglow on both the Earth disk below the satellite and on the limb. Among ionospheric and thermospheric parameters that can be extracted from the imaging data are maps of the atomic oxygen to molecular nitrogen column density ratio and altitude-latitude images of the number density and temperature profiles on the limb. GUVI recorded dramatic changes in these quantities on November 20 and 21, a period when the TIMED orbit was favorable for retrieving composition and temperature from the limb dayglow. We will review GUVI observations during that storm, showing examples of composition and temperature. These will be compared with the initial predictions of the Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Electrodynamics General Circulation Model. This preliminary comparison reveals many similarities between the model and data. High temperatures seen in the GUVI data are reproduced in the model. And significant perturbations in the composition are also reproduced by the TIMEGCM. But significant differences are also noticed in several areas. In particular, GUVI observes a much less rapid recovery of the perturbed thermosphere than predicted. These and other quantitative conclusions demonstrate that FUV imaging will ultimately play a major role space weather imaging analogous to that of visible or infrared monitoring in tropospheric weather.
DE: 0310 Airglow and aurora
DE: 0355 Thermosphere--composition and chemistry
DE: 0358 Thermosphere--energy deposition
SC: SPA-Aeronomy [SA]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting