2022 Workshop: High-Latitude Coupling and Waves

The 10+ years of lidar observations in Antarctica and the Arctic have posed significant challenges to our current understandings of the plasma-neutral coupling, wave dynamics, inter-hemispheric differences, and the atmospheric responses to the ionospheric, magnetospheric, and solar wind drivers. As an example, high-sensitivity lidar measurements have revealed positive (upward) sensible heat fluxes in the lower thermosphere, which contradict the conventional thinking but may well demonstrate the importance of fully compressible solutions for polarization relations of gravity waves and generation of secondary/tertiary gravity waves in the MLT. Another example is the striking differences observed in the thermosphere-ionosphere heavy and light metal species (e.g., Fe and Na). These surprising results invite community efforts to explore observational data and possible mechanisms, e.g., for the transport of constituents (both ions and neutrals), heat, and momentum from both neutral and ionospheric aspects, and for the plasma-neutral coupling. This workshop solicits presentations focusing on the high-latitude plasma-neutral coupling, wave dynamics, and transport studies. We welcome numerical modeling and theoretical studies that can help understand the observations and the underlying physics. We also welcome studies showing driving forces from above and from below, including neutral winds, temperatures, and wave fluxes as well as ionospheric and solar wind observations (such as current systems, ion convection, aurora, etc.).