2023 Workshop: Long-term changes in the ITM system

Note: this workshop will be merged with the workshop titled: Understanding space climate using models and long-term observations. Conveners: Marty Mlynczak, Romina Nikoukar. The merged workshop will be titled: Space climate and long-term changes in the ITM system in the agenda. You can contact either of these two workshops’ conveners for your presentations.

Several factors can impact the long-term changes (longer than a solar cycle) in the ionosphere-thermosphere-mesosphere (ITM) system. Increase in greenhouse gas concentration, changes in earth’s magnetic field and solar activity variations are major drivers of long-term changes in the ionosphere-thermosphere-mesosphere system. Solar irradiation heats and ionizes the upper atmosphere, making the 11-year solar cycle an important temporal scale for variation in the upper atmosphere. Secular changes in earth's magnetic field vary more slowly, on the order of decades, and impacts in the upper atmosphere due to increases in greenhouse gasses are typically of smaller magnitude over timescales of a solar cycle. Long-running ground-based facilities such as the Jicamarca Radio Observatory and the Millstone Hill ISR enable studies of trends over decades. Developments in modeling also enable studies of long-term changes in the ITM system. In this session we invite observational and modeling studies of decades-long trends in the upper atmosphere.