A Global Study of Meridional Winds in the Thermosphere

During the past several years the PI has developed, refined, and applied a technique for determining meridional winds in the upper atmosphere from the height of the ionospheric F2 peak electron density hmax. Recent studies have generally verified the approach and continued funding will move the program into the application and validation phase. Interesting results arising out of recent work will be pursued. The derivation of meridional winds from hmF2 is being established as a technique that complements the incoherent scatter radar and Fabry-Perot techniques. It currently provides the only way to determine neutral winds in the thermosphere on a nearly global basis. This method shows promise of producing results comparable in accuracy to other techniques, and has the advantage that measurements of hmF2 are made routinely and systematically on a global scale. Additional work will concentrate on several interesting aspects of the neutral wind such as storm-time behavior and seasonal, solar cyclical and tidal effects. ***