Response of the Thermosphere and Ionosphere to the November 2003
Magnetic Storm ASTRA is combining their expertise in modeling
and data analysis to answer the fundamental science question
“How does the ionosphere respond to magnetic storms?” Crowley et
al. (2006) presented simulations showing how the dayside
ionosphere responded to the onset of the November 20, 2003
superstorm. The model revealed that the neutral winds drove the
ionospheric plasma to greater altitudes, where O/N2 was larger,
leading to enhanced electron densities in the sunlit sector. In
a previous paper, we used the TIME-GCM to simulate the entire
storm period (Meier et al., 2005). The next step is to use our
model post-processors to analyze the storm response further.