Simulation of the thermospheric tides at equinox with the National Center for Atmospheric Research Thermospheric General Circulation Model

Numerical calculations of the thermospheric tidal winds and temperatures at equinox are presented. The calculations were made using the National Center for Atmospheric Research thermospheric general circulation model (TGCM), which includes the effects of viscosity, conductivity, diffusion, ion drag, winds, and temperature gradients. The thermospheric diurnal and semidiurnal tides are excited in situ by solar heating and by ion-neutral momentum coupling. The semidiurnal tidal calculations also include the effects of upward propagating waves generated by heating in the lower atmosphere. This semidiurnal propagating component is modeled by use of the classical tidal perturbations as lower boundary conditions. The model is tuned by adjusting the propagating tidal forcing term until calculated semidiurnal wind and temperature fields best approximate incoherent scatter observations. The tidal TGCM results are consistent with previous theoretical work and successfully reproduce high-altitude temperature and meridional velocity data, but they give significantly lower magnitudes for velocities and temperatures near 160 km than are seen by observations.

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