Thermosphere-Ionosphere Observing System Simulation Experiments with Physics-based Dynamic Mode Decomposition

Abstract

We describe a novel way to understand the ionosphere-thermosphere coupling via localised dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) based on the TIE-GCM (thermosphere-ionosphere-electrodynamics general circulation model) OTHITACS (open time-series of the high-resolution ionosphere-thermosphere aeronomic climate simulation) dataset. We investigate the possibility of inferring ionospheric electron density from thermospheric neutral mass density measurements and vice versa. In-situ multi-instrument sampling from satellite constellations provides critical data to better understand and manage the impact of space weather on the thermosphere-ionosphere system. Using the TIE-GCM-DMD, we conduct observing system simulation experiments to evaluate a thermosphere-ionosphere data assimilation framework. Here we present experiments using synthetic electron and neutral measurements from Swarm and future geospace dynamics constellation (GDC) missions. We demonstrate the capabilities of the assimilation framework and quantify the improvement in thermosphere-ionosphere modelling by assimilating multi-point Swarm and GDC-like in-situ observations.