 Astrid Maute |  Maria Graciela Molina |  Timofei Sukhodolov |
External impacts and internal dynamics of the Earth’s atmosphere
Focus Area 3 addresses the coupled processes that control the dynamics, structure, and variability of the Earth’s middle and upper atmosphere. This region responds to a combination of external forcing – such as solar radiation, energetic particle precipitation, and geomagnetic activity – and internal atmospheric dynamics driven by waves and tides originating in the lower atmosphere. Nonlinear interactions across spatial and temporal scales shape the background atmosphere and connect it to the surrounding geospace system, with long-term changes in atmospheric composition further influencing these responses.
The main objectives are to determine how external drivers and internal dynamics jointly influence the middle and upper atmosphere; to clarify its role in linking the lower atmosphere with geospace; to assess the impact of cross-scale interactions on atmospheric variability; and to evaluate how coupling across regions and scales affects predictability.
Advancing this focus area requires coordinated use of satellite and ground-based observations, comprehensive modeling frameworks, and emerging data-assimilation and machine-learning techniques. Together, these efforts aim to improve understanding and prediction of the coupled atmosphere-geospace system in the context of space weather space and climate.
The working group topics for Focus Area 3 are shown in the following table. Please contact the working group leaders for more information.
| Working Group Topic | Leader | Institution | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data Integration for Atmospheric Linkage (DIAL) | Fabrizio Sassi | NASA-GSFC, USA | fabrizio.sassi@nasa.gov |
| Yenca Migoya-Orue | ICTP, Italy | yenca@ictp.it | |
| Advancing Whole Atmosphere Modelling: Intercomparison Project (WAMI) | Claudia Stephan | IAP, Germany | ccstephan@iap-kborn.de |
| Chih-Ting Hsu | NSF-NCAR, USA | chihting@ucar.edu | |
| Drivers, Variability, and Forecasting Challenges in Space Weather (ChaS) | Claudio Cesaroni | INGV, Italy | claudio.cesaroni@ingv.it |
| Garima Malhotra | Uni. Colorado Boulder, USA | Garima.Malhotra@colorado.edu |