THERMOSPHERIC NEUTRAL WINDS WITHIN THE POLAR CAP IN RELATION TO SOLAR ACTIVITY

  • Won, Young-In (Polar Research Center, Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute) ;
  • Killeen, T.L. (Space Physics Research Laboratory Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences The University of Michigan) ;
  • Niciejewski, R.J. (Space Physics Research Laboratory Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences The University of Michigan)
  • 발행 : 1995.12.01

초록

Thermospheric neutral winds and temperatures have been collected from the ground-based Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) at Thule Air Base ($76.5^{\circ}N{\;}69.0^{\circ}W$), Greenland since 1985. The thermospheric observations are obtained by determining the Doppler characteristics f the [OI] 6300 ${\AA}$ emissions of atomic oxygen. The FPI operates routinely during the winter season, with a limitation in the observation by the existence of clouds. For this study, data acquired from 1985 to 1991 were analyzed. The neutral wind measurements from these long-term measurements are used to investigate the influence of solar cycle variation on the high-latitude thermospheric dynamics. These data provide experimental results of the geomagnetic polar cap are also compared with the predictions of two semiempirical models : the vector spherical harmonics (VSH) model of Killeen et al. (1987) and the horizontal wind model (HWM) of Hedin et al. (1991). The experimental results show a good positive correlation between solar activity and thermospheric wind speed over the geomagnetic polar cap. The calculated correlation coefficient indicates that an increase of 100 in F10.7 index corresponds to an increase in wind speed of about 100 m/s. The model predictions reveal similar trends of wind speed variation as a function of solar activity, with the VSH and HWM models tending to overestimate and underestimate the wind speed, respectively.

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