2022 Workshop: Themospheric Neutral winds: Dynamics and Chemistry

As outlined in the NSF CEDAR: The New Dimension Strategic Vision [2011] roadmap, the most recent NSF and NASA Decadal Surveys, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan (released in October 2015), and the Space Weather Science and Observations Gap Analysis for NASA (April 2021) there are an enormous number of compelling geospace phenomena that impact our current technological developments that have yet to be resolved. Many of these topics, ranging from equatorial spread-F, mid-latitude quasi-periodic echoes, HR radio disruption, neutral thermospheric helium upwelling, LEO spacecraft drag, auroral-zone heating, gravity, planetary, and tidal waves, region 0, 1, and 2 current systems, ULF wave heating, impact of particle precipitation, etc. fundamentally require high-resolution measurements of the thermospheric wind, over full diurnal and solar cycles, in order to be resolved.

The purpose of this workshop series, which started at CEDAR 2019, is to bring together various experimental and modeling stakeholders interested in advancing our understanding of thermospheric winds and their variability. To wit, we seek to perform a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis on our current understanding of thermospheric winds and their effects on the underlying thermospheric chemistry. Such an analysis requires 1) a review of our current understanding of thermospheric winds, 2) the identification of needed measurements, 3) identification of unanswered problems, and 4) assessment of closure in the next ten years. The workshops will be organized to produce a community-accessible traceability matrix associated with this SWOT analysis.