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Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society
156
SOLAR AND SPACE PHYSICS: A SCIENCE FOR A TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY
New supporting technologies, not specifically targeted for AIM research, have also significantly contributed to the field’s advancement in the past decade. These include cyberinfrastructure, advanced communications, improved sensors, networking technology, increases in computing power, precision navigation systems, and small satellites. Complementing this technology growth were planned developments in
space-borne and ground-based missions, major research instrumentation and facilities development, data
assimilation schemes, and whole-atmosphere model development. These technological advancements
help accelerate scientific endeavors and enable new science areas to be investigated and understood.
The emergence of relocatable incoherent scatter radars (ISRs) based on electronically steerable antenna
arrays is an excellent example. These NSF-supported advanced modular ISRs (AMISRs) can be steered on
a pulse-to-pulse basis, allowing the simultaneous acquisition of information from multiple directions. The
rapid steering capabilities of AMISR-class ISRs provide a unique capability for supporting AIM science
objectives. For instance, these instruments can be used to construct three-dimensional views of the evolving plasma state within a volume traversed by a satellite or rocket.
Model development has been facilitated by major advances in instrumentation and measurement
techniques, experimental facilities, and observing networks, which are starting to provide unprecedented
volumes of data on processes operating across AIM. Together with concurrent progress in computational
techniques, these advances have enabled the development of ever more sophisticated, multidimensional
models of geospace. These models, along with data assimilation schemes, offer the promise of greater
insights into the physical processes at work and improved ability to forecast disruptive events and their
potential impacts.
Development of numerical models that extend from Earth’s surface to the thermosphere/ionosphere
has made significant breakthroughs during the past decade. These whole-atmosphere models are able to
generate atmospheric disturbances, such as sudden stratospheric warming and quasi-biennial oscillation
internally without having to impose artificial forcing, and to investigate their dynamical and electrodynamical coupling to the upper atmosphere in a self-consistent manner. Models that couple the magnetosphere
and the ionosphere/thermosphere have reached the maturity to include feedback interaction between
thermospheric neutrals and magnetospheric plasmas, as well as mass and momentum exchanges within
geospace. In addition, physics-based data assimilation models of the global ionosphere have been developed that are capable of assimilating multiple data types, for example, to reconstruct the electron density
configuration during storms. These models are now running routinely in a test-operational mode for space
weather specification.
The adoption and implementation of a systems approach are more realizable today with the rapid
expansion of multidimensional databases, increasing computational capabilities and sophistication of
numerical tools, and emergence of new sensor technologies. Complementing these technological advancements have been new scientific discoveries that are rooted in a systems perspective of AIM science. What
has emerged from this past research is the recognition that many of the natural coupling processes within
AIM are linked through system complexity processes of feedback, nonlinearity, instability, preconditioning,
and emergent behavior. The following examples of significant accomplishments of the previous decade
reflect this overarching recognition.
8.3.1 Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling
A recent discovery in AIM science comes from a fortuitous combination of new measurement capabilities. The explosive increase in the global distribution of GPS receivers both on the ground and in space
and the flight of the NASA IMAGE mission to image Earth’s magnetosphere-ionosphere (MI) showed a completely new view of ionospheric/magnetospheric coupling during storms. Global GPS maps of ionospheric
Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society
156
SOLAR AND SPACE PHYSICS: A SCIENCE FOR A TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY
New supporting technologies, not specifically targeted for AIM research, have also significantly contributed to the field’s advancement in the past decade. These include cyberinfrastructure, advanced communications, improved sensors, networking technology, increases in computing power, precision navigation systems, and small satellites. Complementing this technology growth were planned developments in
space-borne and ground-based missions, major research instrumentation and facilities development, data
assimilation schemes, and whole-atmosphere model development. These technological advancements
help accelerate scientific endeavors and enable new science areas to be investigated and understood.
The emergence of relocatable incoherent scatter radars (ISRs) based on electronically steerable antenna
arrays is an excellent example. These NSF-supported advanced modular ISRs (AMISRs) can be steered on
a pulse-to-pulse basis, allowing the simultaneous acquisition of information from multiple directions. The
rapid steering capabilities of AMISR-class ISRs provide a unique capability for supporting AIM science
objectives. For instance, these instruments can be used to construct three-dimensional views of the evolving plasma state within a volume traversed by a satellite or rocket.
Model development has been facilitated by major advances in instrumentation and measurement
techniques, experimental facilities, and observing networks, which are starting to provide unprecedented
volumes of data on processes operating across AIM. Together with concurrent progress in computational
techniques, these advances have enabled the development of ever more sophisticated, multidimensional
models of geospace. These models, along with data assimilation schemes, offer the promise of greater
insights into the physical processes at work and improved ability to forecast disruptive events and their
potential impacts.
Development of numerical models that extend from Earth’s surface to the thermosphere/ionosphere
has made significant breakthroughs during the past decade. These whole-atmosphere models are able to
generate atmospheric disturbances, such as sudden stratospheric warming and quasi-biennial oscillation
internally without having to impose artificial forcing, and to investigate their dynamical and electrodynamical coupling to the upper atmosphere in a self-consistent manner. Models that couple the magnetosphere
and the ionosphere/thermosphere have reached the maturity to include feedback interaction between
thermospheric neutrals and magnetospheric plasmas, as well as mass and momentum exchanges within
geospace. In addition, physics-based data assimilation models of the global ionosphere have been developed that are capable of assimilating multiple data types, for example, to reconstruct the electron density
configuration during storms. These models are now running routinely in a test-operational mode for space
weather specification.
The adoption and implementation of a systems approach are more realizable today with the rapid
expansion of multidimensional databases, increasing computational capabilities and sophistication of
numerical tools, and emergence of new sensor technologies. Complementing these technological advancements have been new scientific discoveries that are rooted in a systems perspective of AIM science. What
has emerged from this past research is the recognition that many of the natural coupling processes within
AIM are linked through system complexity processes of feedback, nonlinearity, instability, preconditioning,
and emergent behavior. The following examples of significant accomplishments of the previous decade
reflect this overarching recognition.
8.3.1 Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling
A recent discovery in AIM science comes from a fortuitous combination of new measurement capabilities. The explosive increase in the global distribution of GPS receivers both on the ground and in space
and the flight of the NASA IMAGE mission to image Earth’s magnetosphere-ionosphere (MI) showed a completely new view of ionospheric/magnetospheric coupling during storms. Global GPS maps of ionospheric