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Monthly climatologies of zonal-mean and tidal winds in the thermosphere as observed by ICON/MIGHTI during April 2020-March 2022
  • +5
  • Yosuke Yamazaki,
  • Brian J Harding,
  • Lihui Qiu,
  • Claudia Stolle,
  • Tarique Adnan Siddiqui,
  • Yasunobu Miyoshi,
  • Christoph R Englert,
  • Scott L England
Yosuke Yamazaki
Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Rostock

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Brian J Harding
University of California, Berkeley
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Lihui Qiu
China University of Geosciences (Wuhan)
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Claudia Stolle
Leibniz Institut of Atmosphereic Physics at the University of Rostock
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Tarique Adnan Siddiqui
Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics
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Yasunobu Miyoshi
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Kyushu University
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Christoph R Englert
Naval Research Laboratory
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Scott L England
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Abstract

Version 5 (v05) of the thermospheric wind data from the Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging (MIGHTI) instrument on the Ionospheric CONnections (ICON) mission has been recently released, which largely avoids local-time dependent artificial baseline drifts that are found in previous versions of the ICON/MIGHTI wind data. This paper describes monthly climatologies of zonal-mean winds and tides based on the v05 ICON/MIGHTI data under geomagnetically quiet conditions (Hp30 < 3o) during April 2020-March 2022. Green-line winds in the lower thermosphere (90-110 km) and red-line winds in the middle thermosphere (200-300 km) are analyzed, as these data cover both daytime and nighttime. The altitude and latitude structures of zonal-mean winds and tides are presented for each month, and the results are compared with the widely-used empirical model, Horizontal Wind Model 2014 (HWM14). The v05 wind retrieval algorithm does not involve HWM14. The ICON/MIGHTI and HWM14 results are in general agreement, providing a validation of the v05 ICON/MIGHTI data. The agreement is especially good for the zonal-mean winds. The tidal amplitudes in HWM14 are often too small compared with those from ICON/MIGHTI as well as previous studies. A more accurate description of tides in the thermosphere is key to the future improvement of HWM.
01 Apr 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
04 Apr 2023Published in ESS Open Archive