Heliophysics Science Division
Sciences and Exploration Directorate - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

February 15th, 2019, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm, SED Director's Seminar, Hosted by the Ionospheric, Thermospheric, Mesospheric Physics Laboratory (675)



Pulsating Aurora, the Celestial Lava Lamp


Sarah Jones

Pulsating aurora is one of the most commonly occurring types of aurora, developing on more than half of all nights. It is spatially very widespread and temporally very persistent and is caused by higher energy particles than other types of aurora. These higher energy particles are known to produce changes in the composition of the upper atmosphere. In addition, some of these particles may even originate in the Earth's radiation belts, contributing to the loss of radiation belt electrons to the upper atmosphere. The LAMP sounding rocket mission will launch into pulsating aurora, the celestial lava lamp, to see if it plays a significant role in the emptying the Earth?s radiation belts.


Investigating Connections between the Winter Stratosphere and the Cold Summer Mesospause


Ruth Lieberman

Recent work has documented links between the temperature of the winter stratosphere, and occurrences of noctilucent, or polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) in the summer mesopause. This linkage represents an apparent connection between two highly dissimilar phenomena over a very great distance. Because polar mesospheric cloud occurrences are considered markers of long-term global change, it is important to understand all processes that lead to their year-to-year variations. We explore a mechanism for interhemispheric coupling through a process called inertial instability, that accompanies wintertime stratospheric planetary wave breaking near the equator. Inertial instability has been shown in numerical models to destabilize the equatorial wind profile, and to trigger waves that warm the high-altitude summer polar region, thereby reducing PMCs. The goal of this project is to reveal, for the first time, the full linkage process using observations from a middle atmosphere satellite, and the Navy Global Environment Model (NAVGEM).


Large Amplitude Neutral "Jets" Associated with the Aurora


Rob Pfaff