Empirical Ionospheric Models: The Road To Conductivity

The Earth's polar ionosphere is a highly dynamic region of the upper atmosphere, and acts as the closure of the greater magnetospheric current system. This region plays host to many electrodynamic effects that impact terrestrial systems, such as power grids, railroads, and pipelines. These effects are fundamentally related to the currents, electric fields, and conductivity present in the polar ionosphere. Understanding and predicting the electrodynamics of this region is vital to being able to determine the physical impacts on terrestrial systems and provide predictions to government and commercial entities.

Empirical models play a key role in the research and forecasting of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field's impact on the polar ionosphere, and is an active area of development and research. Recent interest in polar ionospheric conductivity has led to a community-wide campaign to develop our understanding of this portion of the electrodynamic system.

Characterizing the interactions between the solar wind and the polar ionosphere is a difficult task, as the region of interest is highly data starved in many respects. In particular, satellite based data products are scarce due to being costly and logistically difficult. Recent advancements in data sources (such as the Swarm and CHAMP satellite missions) as well as continued research into the physical relationships between solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field drivers have provided the opportunity to develop new, novel tools to study this region of interest. In this dissertation, two polar ionosphere models are described in Chapters 3 and 4, along with the original research that their construction has produced in Chapter 1. These two models are combined to provide a foundation for future research in this area, which is described in Chapter 5.