*Yue Deng1, Cheng Sheng1, Toshi Nishimura2, William Bristow3, Christine Gabrielse4, Shunrong Zhang5, Larry Lyons6
(1.University of Texas at Arlington, 2.Boston University, 3.Pennsylvania State University, 4.Aerospace Corporation, 5.MIT Haystack Observatory, 6.University of California Los Angeles)
Keywords:Ionosphere-thermosphere modeling, multi-scale forcing, ground-based observations
Techniques developed in the past few years enable the derivation of high-resolution regional ion convection and particle precipitation patterns from the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) and All-Sky Imager (ASI) observations, respectively. In this study, global ionosphere-thermosphere model (GITM) is driven by the high-resolution patterns derived from those new observational capabilities to simulate the I-T response during the March 26, 2014 event. It is found that multi-scale ion convection forcing estimated from high-resolution SuperDARN observations has a very strong meso-scale component, which increases the regional Joule heating by 30% on average. The meso-scale electron precipitation derived from ASI measurements contributes to 30% of the total electron energy flux, and its impact on the neutral density and winds is comparable to the meso-scale convection forcing estimated from SuperDARN observations. Both meso-scale convection and precipitation forcing are found to strongly enhance ionospheric and thermospheric disturbances, especially at meso-scale.