A Novel Method to Derive Exospheric Temperatures from Swarm Thermospheric Densities during Quiet Times

One of the most important parameters in the atmosphere, the neutral temperature, becomes difficult to measure at high altitudes such as the exosphere. Therefore, based on the assumption of static equilibrium and isothermal atmosphere, a new method was developed to derive quiet-time exospheric temperatures using neutral atmospheric densities from...

Exospheric Temperature Measured by NASA-GOLD Under Low Solar Activity: Comparison With Other Data Sets

Exospheric temperature is one of the key parameters in constructing thermospheric models and has been extensively studied with in situ observations and remote sensing. The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) at a geosynchronous vantage point provides dayglow limb images for two longitude sectors, from which we can estimate...

Two-Dimensional Reconstruction of Ionospheric Plasma Density Variations Using Swarm

Space weather phenomena such as scintillations of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals are of increasing importance for aviation, the maritime, and civil engineering industries. The ionospheric plasma irregularities causing scintillations are associated with strong gradients in ionospheric plasma density. To provide nowcasts and...

Thermosphere densities derived from Swarm GPS observations

After the detection of many anomalies in the Swarm accelerometer data, an alternative method has been developed to determine thermospheric densities for the three-satellite mission. Using a precise orbit determination approach, non-gravitational and aerodynamic-only accelerations are estimated from the high-quality Swarm GPS data. The GPS...

High-dynamic baseline determination for the Swarm constellation

Baseline determination for the European Space Agency Swarm magnetic field mission is investigated. Swarm consists of three identical satellites -A, -B and -C. The Swarm-A and -C form a pendulum formation whose baseline length varies between about 30 and 180 km. Swarm-B flies in a higher orbit, causing its orbital plane to slowly rotate with...

Global Ionospheric and Thermospheric Effects of the June 2015 Geomagnetic Disturbances: Multi-Instrumental Observations and Modeling

By using data from multiple instruments, we investigate ionospheric/thermospheric behavior during the period from 21 to 23 June 2015, when three interplanetary shocks (IS) of different intensities arrived at Earth. The first IS was registered at 16:45 UT on 21 June and caused ~50 nT increase in the SYM-H index. The second IS arrived at 5:45...

Gravity field models derived from Swarm GPS data

It is of great interest to numerous geophysical studies that the time series of global gravity field models derived from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data remains uninterrupted after the end of this mission. With this in mind, some institutes have been spending efforts to estimate gravity field models from alternative...

Impact of Swarm GPS receiver updates on POD performance

The Swarm satellites are equipped with state-of-the-art Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, which are used for the precise geolocation of the magnetic and electric field instruments, as well as for the determination of the Earth's gravity field, the total electron content and low-frequency thermospheric neutral densities. The onboard...