Abstract

The Earth's atmospheric regions are intricately coupled to one another via dynamical, chemical, and electrodynamical processes in addition to those of the solar and interplanetary effects. The duration of couplings and energy exchange in the sun-earth system can be characterized into short-scales... Show moreThe Earth's atmospheric regions are intricately coupled to one another via dynamical, chemical, and electrodynamical processes in addition to those of the solar and interplanetary effects. The duration of couplings and energy exchange in the sun-earth system can be characterized into short-scales (hours to days, e.g., the time scale of space weather), medium-scales (seasonal, annual, etc.), and long-scales (solar cycle). Several new observations in the recent past have revealed a close connection between the dynamical processes in the lower atmosphere with that of the temporal and spatial variability in the thermosphere and the ionosphere, such as the existence of diurnal eastward nonmigrating tidal modes 3 or 4 in the plasma densities being closely associated with the convective structures of the meteorological weather system in the low-altitude atmosphere, stratospheric sudden warming (SSW) events in high-latitudes showing features of enhanced or phase shift of the diurnal variation in neutral and ionized parameters in the upper atmosphere at low latitudes, and propagation of waves from high- to low-latitudes, especially during space weather events. This special issue on the Atmospheric Coupling Processes in the Sun-Earth System presents results on the inter-coupled nature of various regions, namely, magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, ionosphere-thermosphere coupling at low and equatorial latitudes, vertical coupling of atmospheric layers and space weather effects on the atmospheric coupling processes. A few papers also present results on the long-term climatological variations of neutral winds and temperature in the atmospheric regions. The following sections give a broad overview of specific areas covered and elucidate some important results from each of the articles published in this special issue. Show less