EZDrifts: An analytic global model of the Equatorial F-region Zonal plasma Drifts

We present results of a study to determine the ability of an analytic model to describe the global morphology of the equatorial F-region zonal plasma drifts when driven by open-source climatological models of thermospheric and ionospheric parameters. In a variation to a data-model fusion approach that used height-dependent vertical drift measurements from Jicamarca as one of the inputs, we used a height-independent empirical model of the vertical drifts to drive our model. We compared the height-dependence of the climatological zonal drifts with the height-dependence produced by the data-model fusion approach. We found that the analytic model can reproduce within a small margin of error the data-model fusion zonal drifts. The major difference between our approach and the data-model fusion approach is that the analytic model can provide zonal drifts for any longitude sector and solar flux conditions. We went on to evaluate the resulting global equatorial zonal drift morphology for different seasons at low solar flux conditions. We focused, in particular, on the longitudinal variations of the zonal drifts. We found that, despite its simplicity, the analytic model can reproduce the longitudinal variability of the equatorial zonal drifts as measured by the C/NOFS satellite.