Numerical modelling of coupled neutral atmospheric general circulation and ionosphere D region

Source abstract

Abstract The paper presents a new neutral atmosphere and ionosphere D region coupled general circulation model (for altitudes of 0-90 km) with a high spatial resolution. Efficient numerical methods of its implementation are developed. The properties of differential formulation for a plasma-chemical model of ionosphere D region are studied, the existence of a global attractor in the non-negative half of the phase space is proved, an efficient semi-implicit numerical scheme possessing the charge conservation law is constructed to solve the system. The problem of radio waves propagation in the ionosphere D region has been considered for the coupled model, we validated the model on the base of radio signals monitoring data and developed a computational unit for calculation of the radio signal attenuation in the lower ionosphere. A satisfactory reproduction of the D region mean state is shown and the ability to develope this model for use in applied tasks is indicated.