The Global Numerical Model of the Earth’s Upper Atmosphere

Abstract

The global numerical first principle 3D model of the upper atmosphere (UAM) for the heights 60–100,000 km is presented. The physical continuity, motion, heat balance and electric potential equations for the neutral, ion and electron gases and their numerical solution method are described. The numerical grids, spatial and time integration steps are given together with the boundary and initial conditions and inputs. Testing and obtained geophysical results are given for many observed situations at various levels of solar, geomagnetic and seismic activity. and in the magnetosphere tail via the magnetic field lines reconnection processes and connected with the polar upper atmosphere in the auroral zones via FACs including the current wedges. The substorm auroral currents are reflected by the auroral magnetic activity indexes AL , AU and AE . The UAM takes into account these indexes. This allows the modeling of the upper atmospheric behavior during substorms via the UAM simulations. The results were presented in [4, 48–53] including the cusp and auroral oval behavior, energetic magnetospheric electron precipitations, electric fields, current wedge and internal atmospheric gravity waves generation. The main role of the thermospheric heating due to the soft electron precipitation was shown for the thermosphere substorm effects.