Thermospheric O₂ from the GOLD Mission: Storm Time Effects and Relationships with O/N₂, the Polar Vortex, and Daytime Plasma Density

The ionosphere-thermosphere (IT) system exhibits characteristics that directly impact human activities, including radio wave scintillation and satellite drag. Molecular oxygen (O₂), the third most abundant species in the lower thermosphere, is an important constituent in this system and plays a critical role in the chemistry balance of the IT. Despite this region being notoriously hard to make measurements, the Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission is able directly retrieve O₂ density profiles via stellar occultation. Previous studies have investigated O₂ variation with local time and solar activity. This research seeks to validate the measurements of this dataset, by comparing the O₂ dataset against: thermospheric O/ N₂ column density, ionospheric plasma density, the state of the polar vortex, and its storm-time behavior compared to a global circulation model (ICON-TIEGCM).