Estimating The Forces That Drive Ionosphere And Thermosphere Variability: Continuous Data And Assimilative Modeling

onosphere-thermosphere science has long been hampered by a lack of measurements of the underlying forces that determine plasma structure. These forces include electric fields, thermospheric composition, winds and solar EUV irradiance. All of these forces are dynamic quantities and of great importance to the underlying science. The rapid proliferation of electron density and total electron content measurements from ground and space-borne GPS receivers and other instruments suggests a great potential in the following indirect approach to estimating these forces: developing a model-based approach to retrieving the forces from the electron density structure and dynamics. The research community has just begun to explore such an approach, which addresses significant science questions previously out of reach.