EGU24-11681, updated on 09 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-11681
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The I-T response to most recent solar eclipses: Observations and modeling

Sebastijan Mrak1, Clayton Cantrall1, Naomi Maruyama2, Phil Chamberlin2, Saurav Aryal2, Yue Deng3, and Marc Hairston4
Sebastijan Mrak et al.
  • 1JHU Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, USA
  • 2Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, USA
  • 3University of Texas Arlington, Arlington, USA
  • 4University of Texas Dallas, Dallas, USA

We discuss multiple observations of atmospheric dynamics during recent solar eclipses: 21 August 2017, 4 December 2021, 20 April 2023, 14 October 2023, and 8 April 2024. We use GOLD and TIMED/GUVI instruments to observe the changes in the lower thermosphere related to atmospheric oxygen O, and molecular nitrogen N2. We discuss the problematic nature of O/N2 composition estimation from brightnesses under solar obscuration conditions, and how the observations should be properly interpreted. The Ionosphere-Thermosphere (I-T) system responds to solar X-Ray and Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) radiation, which is highly non-uniform during solar eclipses. We introduce a new model of solar eclipse obscuration and irradiance by combining the solar occultation software PyEclipse and Flare Irradiance Solar Model 2 (FISM2) -- FISM2-Eclipse. We implemented FISM2-Eclipse into the Global Ionosphere thermosphere Model (GITM) and Whole Atmosphere Model Ionosphere-Plasmasphere-Electrodynamics model (WAM-IPE) to conduct a model-data comparison. We discuss some salient features noted during the recent eclipses.

How to cite: Mrak, S., Cantrall, C., Maruyama, N., Chamberlin, P., Aryal, S., Deng, Y., and Hairston, M.: The I-T response to most recent solar eclipses: Observations and modeling, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-11681, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-11681, 2024.