Multievent Analysis of Storm-time Thermospheric Temperature Variations from GOLD measurements

The thermospheric response to geomagnetic storms is a critical component of the space weather system, influencing satellite operations and communication technologies as well as crucial for improving space weather models. In this study, spatial and temporal variations of thermospheric temperature (Tn) around 160 km altitude derived from the Global‐scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission measurements during multiple geomagnetic storms have been investigated. A survey of geomagnetic storms has been conducted for the period from October 2018 to September 2021, when GOLD provides 34 global maps of thermospheric temperature (from 70°S to 70°N latitudes and from 120°W to 20°E longitudes) every 30 minutes from ~06 to ~23 UT. Four storm events with good GOLD Tn data quality have been selected. In order to investigate thermospheric temperature response to geomagnetic forcing, we will focus on (1) quantifying the storm-time temperature perturbations and (2) the rate of change of temperature perturbations at different latitudes and during different phases of storms. Our analysis shows that the magnitude of storm-time temperature perturbations is usually between 15 K to 110 K on average, with larger magnitudes at higher latitudes. A clear propagation of neutral temperature variations from high to middle and low latitudes can be identified in all events. Our results provide metrics of storm-time thermospheric temperature variations on a global scale, which are rare and can be useful for validating simulations from different models.