DWM07 global empirical model of upper thermospheric storm‐induced disturbance winds

Abstract

We present a global empirical disturbance wind model (DWM07) that represents average geospace‐storm‐induced perturbations of upper thermospheric (200–600 km altitude) neutral winds. DWM07 depends on the following three parameters: magnetic latitude, magnetic local time, and the 3‐h Kp geomagnetic activity index. The latitude and local time dependences are represented by vector spherical harmonic functions (up to degree 10 in latitude and order 3 in local time), and the Kp dependence is represented by quadratic B‐splines. DWM07 is the storm time thermospheric component of the new Horizontal Wind Model (HWM07), which is described in a companion paper. DWM07 is based on data from the Wind Imaging Interferometer on board the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, the Wind and Temperature Spectrometer on board Dynamics Explorer 2, and seven ground‐based Fabry‐Perot interferometers. The perturbation winds derived from the three data sets are in good mutual agreement under most conditions, and the model captures most of the climatological variations evident in the data.