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The additional magnetic field produced by the ionospheric current system is a part of the Earth’s magnetic field. This current system is a highly variable part of a global electric circuit. The solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere is the external driver for the global electric circuit in the ionosphere. The energy is transferred via the field-aligned currents (FACs) to the Earth’s ionosphere. The interactions between the neutral and charged particles in the ionosphere lead to the so-called thermospheric neutral wind dynamo which represents the second important driver for the global current system. Both processes are components of the magnetosphere–ionosphere–thermosphere (MIT) system, which depends on solar and geomagnetic conditions, and have significant seasonal and UT variations.
The modeling of the global dynamic Earth’s ionospheric current system is the first aim of this investigation. For our study, we use the Potsdam version of the Upper Atmosphere Model (UAM-P). The UAM is a first-principle, time-dependent, and fully self-consistent numerical global model. The model includes the thermosphere, ionosphere, plasmasphere, and inner magnetosphere as well as the electrodynamics of the coupled MIT system for the altitudinal range from 80 (60) km up to the 15 Earth radii. The UAM-P differs from the UAM by a new electric field block. For this study, the lower latitudinal and equatorial electrodynamics of the UAM-P model was improved.
The calculation of the ionospheric current system’s contribution to the Earth’s magnetic field is the second aim of this study. We present the method, which allows computing the additional magnetic field inside and outside the current layer as generated by the space current density distribution using the Biot-Savart law. Additionally, we perform a comparison of the additional magnetic field calculation using 2D (equivalent currents) and 3D current distribution.
We propose a reduced dynamical system describing the coupled evolution of fluid flow and magnetic field at the top of the Earth's core between the years 1900 and 2014. The flow evolution is modeled with a first-order autoregressive process, while the magnetic field obeys the classical frozen flux equation. An ensemble Kalman filter algorithm serves to constrain the dynamics with the geomagnetic field and its secular variation given by the COV-OBS.x1 model. Using a large ensemble with 40,000 members provides meaningful statistics including reliable error estimates. The model highlights two distinct flow scales. Slowly varying large-scale elements include the already documented eccentric gyre. Localized short-lived structures include distinctly ageostophic features like the high-latitude polar jet on the Northern Hemisphere. Comparisons with independent observations of the length-of-day variations not only validate the flow estimates but also suggest an acceleration of the geostrophic flows over the last century. Hindcasting tests show that our model outperforms simpler predictions bases (linear extrapolation and stationary flow). The predictability limit, of about 2,000 years for the magnetic dipole component, is mostly determined by the random fast varying dynamics of the flow and much less by the geomagnetic data quality or lack of small-scale information.