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Space Weather Effects on the Middle and Upper Atmosphere by Joshua M Space Weather Effects on the Middle and Upper Atmosphere by Joshua M. Pettit B.S., Cornell University, 2012 M.S., University of Colorado Boulder, 2014 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences 2019 i This thesis entitled: Space Weather Effects on the Middle and Upper Atmosphere written by Joshua M. Pettit has been approved for the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences _______________________________ Cora E. Randall _______________________________ V. Lynn Harvey Date _______________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. ii Pettit, Joshua M. (Ph.D., Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences) Space Weather Effects on the Middle and Upper Atmosphere Thesis directed by Prof. Cora E. Randall Abstract: Impulsive solar events (ISEs) have a pronounced impact on the middle and upper atmosphere. Solar flares emit copious amounts of x-ray and EUV radiation that can ionize the D, E, and F regions of the ionosphere. Coronal mass ejections and geomagnetic storms can cause energetic particle precipitation. This creates nitrogen oxides and hydrogen oxides, which catalytically destroy ozone. Most global climate models exclude both radiation from solar flares and particles from geomagnetic storms and as a result, does not capture the atmospheric effects from these events. The work presented here improves modeling of ISEs by including high-energy photons from solar flares and energetic electrons from geomagnetic storms in the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM). This is necessary in order to simulate accurately chemistry changes during and after ISEs. We found significant impacts on the D and lower E-regions of the ionosphere from WACCM simulations of the September 2005 solar flares. Effects from the flares were confined to the dayside of Earth but persisted a few days below the thermosphere. Large increases in electron densities were found from the lower D-region through the top of the model (~140 km). Moderate production of odd nitrogen in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere occurred during the larger flare events of the time period. We showed that differences in flare spectrum had a distinct impact on the intensity, length and location of the effects. This investigation also targeted the influence of electron precipitation during the 2003 SH polar winter. Two different energetic electron data sets were included in simulations using the WACCM model with D-region chemistry. Both electron data sets contained electrons >30 keV using the Medium Energy Proton and Electron Detector (MEPED), however only one uses both telescopes onboard MEPED. Both simulations that included electrons >30 keV compared better with observations than the baseline simulation. The simulation that included both telescopes iii agreed better with observations than the other simulations. The results confirm that including both telescopes during geomagnetically active time periods leads to better agreement with observations in the precipitation effects, particularly at sub-polar latitudes. iv Acknowledgements Thank you to Cora E. Randall for the immense amount of time and effort she spent attempting to turn me into a productive scientist. Thank you to V. Lynn Harvey for her help in improving my scientific programming. Thank you to Jeff France, Ethan Peck, Laura Holt, Susanne Benze, Matthias Brakebusch, Adrianna Hackett, Colby Brabec, and Ryan Ligon for sitting through endless group meetings listening to me ramble. I would also like to thank my close friends and all my old roommates for trying to keep me grounded over the past few years. Thank you to Karlsruhe Institute for Technology for their contribution of MIPAS data. Thank you to Phil Chamberlin for access and support of the FISM data. This research has been funded by the NASA Living With a Star program, grant NNX14AH54G, the NSF Frontiers of Earth System Dynamics program, grant AGS 1135432, and the NSF Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions, grant AGS 1651428. The CESM project is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center provided resources supporting this work. v Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Goals and Motivation ...................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Energetic Particle Sources ............................................................................................... 2 1.3 Particle Precipitation ..................................................................................................... 12 1.4 Middle Atmosphere Chemistry ..................................................................................... 22 1.5 Middle Atmosphere Meteorology ................................................................................ 30 1.6 Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model ........................................................... 34 1.6.1 Model Description ................................................................................................ 34 1.6.2 Ionization from protons ........................................................................................ 36 1.6.3 Ionization from electrons ...................................................................................... 37 1.6.4 Ionization from photons ....................................................................................... 42 2. Effects of the September 2005 Solar Flares and Solar Proton Events on the Middle Atmosphere in WACCM ................................................................................................................. 46 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 46 2.2 Model Description....................................................................................................... 52 2.3 Numerical Experiments ............................................................................................... 54 2.4 Results and Discussion ............................................................................................... 57 2.5 Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 57 3. Atmospheric Effects of >30 keV Energetic Electron Precipitation in the Southern Hemisphere Winter of 2003 ................................................................................................................................ 76 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 76 3.2 Model and Datasets ..................................................................................................... 80 3.3 Results and Discussion ............................................................................................... 87 3.4 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 102 4. Overall summary and conclusions and future work ............................................................... 106 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................... 111 Appendix ........................................................................................................................................... 128 Appendix A List of Acronyms ....................................................................................................... 128 vi Tables Table 1.1 HOx Production from Ionization in WACCM ............................................................... 37 2.1 WACCM Model Simulations ........................................................................................ 54 vii Figures Figure 1.7 Schematic of Sun’s Interior ............................................................................................. 4 1.8 Sunspot butterfly diagram and sunspot area .................................................................... 5 1.9 Schematic of charged particle motion ........................................................................... 11 1.10 Schematic of ionization profiles of particles ............................................................... 14 1.11 Disposition altitudes of XUV and EUV energy .......................................................... 23 1.12 Lifetime of NO ............................................................................................................ 30 1.13 Middle atmosphere zonal wind circulation ................................................................. 32 1.14 Middle atmosphere meridional wind circulation ........................................................ 33 2.1 SPE ionization production rate ...................................................................................... 55 2.2 FISM 1.3
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